Barry Middleton Poems

grandfathers and great grandfathers
walked these hills
and further back in time
a hand flourished on the Declaration
...

a castoff from a distant land
conspired with night and poetry

composing darkness and the dawn
...

I heard the heart of poetry
I was inspired by the curve of space
and by the breath of summer
...

it builds in the gut
like a heavy metal
till the poison kills
...

Before the spring,
before the bare twigs
of my season tree began to show
a damp green haze
...

the punishment is in the stars
as if I sinned before my birth
as if pain was my destiny
I came to earth already cursed
...

had I never stopped
I never would have heard
never would have learned
...

Humanity is lost,
it became a beast.

It lost its way
...

I wander now in the comfort of silence
I close my eyes and the clock runs backwards
I am a child again
a warm summer breeze rushes across a field
...

When silence sleeps,
exhausted
in the dead of night,
then watchers
...