by Samuel Burt
Through the feet-dragging chores
of adolescent summers, with our petty feuds
hung up in the house,
I would follow my dad, stubborn
and silent, through his garden.
Between trellises slung low
with snow peas and overstuffed rows
of bush beans, we took
our slow and sidelong steps, harvesting shoulder
to shoulder
atop a mulch of cut grass and leaf scraps
steaming in the sun. Today—
the same; my hands blush red
at the scrape of sandpaper leaves as I lift them,
parting them, reaching bare arms
deep into the beans’ sharp shade to find
the thin, firm victories he had missed
hanging there for me.
As we rinse our crop in the same cold
bowl beneath the hose, I watch him pause
to splash a palmful
of the washing water over his mouth,
pulling droplets of relief
between his lips like undulating gems
of sunlight. And I can see,
on the pale bellies of his wrists, the same
raw color, the same swollen,
criss-crossed shapes of leaf-caught skin that wrap
around my arms.
And I watch them fade
together, his wounds and mine, in the mercy
of the water, arms
and mouths sharing its cool
with all the goodness
the seasons hide away for us—
all we find in the scrape and shade
where our hands speak
with a care our mouths will not.
Samuel Burt is a poet and artist from Grinnell, Iowa. A 2022 winner of the AWP’s Intro Journals Project, Samuel’s work has been featured in Beaver Magazine, Salt Hill, Colorado Review, Ghost City Review, and Arc Poetry Magazine. He holds a poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, reads for Fahmidan Journal, and works at a college library in Iowa.
Emerge Literary Journal 