Beverly Burch
Stormy Sonnet
Rain sheets sideways over roofs and pounds
love notes into parched dirt, sloppy kisses
to rouse its long sleep. Upstairs, I’m mesmerized
as the crown of a large oak sways. Fierce wind,
tangerine leaves sweeping dark sky,
until, across the street, an unstable Chinese elm
uproots itself, leaps onto the wet road and collapses
in a wild green shiver. Ten months, no rain.
Months, terrorized by drought, fire, heat.
We’re mad for the spectacle of a storm. No power
in the neighborhood, high risk of floods
and mudslide. We’re not out singing,
we’re cloistered inside. But single-hearted,
devout, whispering Hallelujahs to the sky.
Hollow Bones
Gingko, its quivering leaves, bird-like,
frightened on their hollow bones, fanned over us
as we poured wine into Dixie Cups,
a bargain red, the few ounces you could handle.
No actual birds around, silent as they are
mid-afternoon, only those leaves, trapped
and fluttering on memory’s thin stalks.
In that uprooted city, it was good
to have an ancient relic above us.
You would have stayed all day if you could.
The next year I drove past not wanting to look.
October had stunned the tree. Leaves like a flock
of gold, broadcasting to a listening sky.
New moon crooked a skinny finger overhead:
spread those ashes. Chastised, I returned at dawn
with my ceramic pot. The poor tree naked,
a total overnight drop. They do that.
Maidenhair, bald now.
What would you think if I left you there anyway?
I did, with relief. Scattered you in its blond debris.
False medicine in gingko, I read.
Its extract does not heal body or mind.
Does not improve memory. It jolts memory.
I planted one in my yard. This morning I saw it,
an old scarecrow, yellow pooled at its feet.
I flinched. Foolish body, speaking like that.
The ashes were a mistake. I have not released you.
Beverly Burch’s third book, Latter Days of Eve, won the John Ciardi Poetry Prize. Her work has won a Lambda Literary Award, a Gival Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Audre Lorde and Housatonic Book Awards. She has poetry in 32 Poems, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, New England Review, Salamander and Barrow Street. She lives in Oakland, CA.
