Jim Burns

I slide out of the ’55 Buick Special, the penultimate
in a long series of identical models traded by my father
like clockwork every four years, and now it sits
oblivious to its position in the parade of our country’s
finest steel on rubber. As I walk from the car
my steps feel light and airy, my entire body,
wracked by disease of late, feels light and airy too,
like a ghost, much different from my familiar
death row trudge back then, and I pause to listen
to what I had never chosen to hear: the songbirds
in the trees surrounding the house, branches as grizzled
as the old structure itself, and crawling with snakes
until my uncle shot them down, their return to the earth
marked by dull thumps, and the bullfrogs croaking
in my uncle’s pond across the way, their throaty calls
no longer masquerading quiet desperation, but now ones
of conjugal triumph, while out back, the chickens
cackle smugly, no longer wary of being relieved
of their heads and racing wildly around and around
the yard—I used to wonder why and where to,
knowing even then that you can’t outrun death—
until they fell and were stripped of their feathers,
gutted and thrown into a pot. And then I pause
at the squeaking screen backdoor, the one on which
once climbed an entire litter of kittens announcing
their lives, puling for sustenance, until my grandfather
grew weary of his wife’s loud complaints about their noise,
took up his shotgun with its double barrels,
and the kittens were no more, then he walked
to his raspberry patch, which I would not enter
because I feared the thorns as much as the snakes,
and plucked a hatful of plump, dark berries,
which he presented to me, their juice soon running
down my chin. Today those kittens purr and suckle
their mother, and the taste of the berries remains
in the back of my throat, but I don’t enter the house
to again find my grandfather slumped dead on the floor,
his meticulously prepared breakfast waiting uneaten.
Yes, I’ll stop at this door that still bears holes
from his birdshot, because I feel it’s better now
than it was back then, and I climb into the Buick
and let it roll me away.

Bio

Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana and received degrees from both Indiana State University (B.S., M.S., History) and Indiana University (MLS), then spent most of his working years as a librarian, while spending about 15 years doing proofreading and light copy editing on the side. Retirement presented him with free time, and he turned to an early interest in writing. Over the last five to six years he has published over 40 poems and a handful of creative nonfiction pieces. He lives with his wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.