On My Father's Birthday by Jeff Burt
He sometimes likes to sit in a chair and imagine he is typing,
pressing the keys ever harder and R sticking on return.
He sometimes likes to sit in a chair and imagine he is scribbling,
scratching the pencil across the pad making a love poem
out of old words and common images in a new way.
He sometimes likes to sit in a chair and imagine he is listening
to Whitman ramble and feel his soul enlarging
and his heart about to burst, and then he empties the chair
and leaves it without purpose and becomes the purpose he was meant
by walking, often by water, two things toppling into one,
history held by numinous life forming in his living frame
and the future like a hand-tied fly wafting into the present.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife and a July abundance of plums. He has work in the The Cortland Review, Corium, Agave, and Wayfarer, and forthcoming in 3QR and Clerestory. He won the 2011 SuRaa short fiction award.
