Samuel Burt

Empire Is

Frail and flint-toothed, like rusted ice picks, 
we stumble from the monotone wreck 
of the city into yawning silence, into alarm—
two pheasants, a stillness, and a scatter
of mortal shock. Through an early morning
foretaste of rain, the full moon shines 
sheer as a scratched lens. Walking the field 
together, I watch you watch the distance, 
half-focused, attending neither timber 
nor the shallow trills from tallgrass. 
Hear without listening: another challenge 
from the book of joy. The dewdrops 
are running out of time, and of the few birds 
left, we know their calls by heart; 
I name them anyway, stepping lightly 
through the intelligible world, lifted 
by each particular, each scrape of thigh 
to thorax, each wavering throat until 
you’re tired of me. Maybe you think 
I think distinction pulls them closer, but here, 
love, this is desire—desire and a winged 
whir cupped between my palms. 
Three deer jitter in their newfound nakedness, 
thin already in thinning brush, fear, 
desire, or darkness widening their eyes. 
Here is a thought that I fear: the greater 
your certainty, the less you can see. The self 
a narrowed gaze—sure in its rightness, 
terror in its service. Like the idea that 
any language of justification is a language 
of violence. That empire begins in one 
doubtless name. Above us, the treetops 
shimmer, shot through. If it’s true 
that wisdom is an eye slipping out of focus,
then when the trees burn, and the grain 
burns, and the empty soil is sewn 
with their dust, how will I look away? 
If I count every heart to constitute the field, 
every finger of the hand in mine, isn’t that 
wonder? As today, lifting our faces 
as droplets fell from the trees, watching a bird 
watch us, drab against drab sky, hopping 
above, practicing octaves. Tufted, ring-necked, 
unidentifiable—I lived for a moment
in bewilderment’s blank stare, sure I knew nothing, 
and dizzy with it, my hands still clasped tight 
around what I’d caught, swearing 
I can feel it beat its wings against my palms…
You said the bird was just a Blue Jay, maybe 
grayed by the day, choosing its gentlest phrases, 
but I’d already leaned out of its name
and into desire, hands cupped around nothing
to coax your ear close. So close you could hear it—
an intake of breath, a tug at your ear. 

Samuel Burt is a poet and artist from Grinnell, Iowa. The 2024 recipient of the Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship from the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association and a 2022 winner of the AWP’s Intro Journals Project, Samuel’s poems have been featured in Salt Hill, Colorado Review, The Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, and many more print and digital journals. He holds a poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, reads for Fahmidan Journal, and works at the Grinnell College Libraries.