Corona Poem by Michael Burch

Corona
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
  without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
    but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
      felt more than seen.
      I was eighteen,
    my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
  Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.

There was an instant...
  without words, but with a deeper communion,
    as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
      liquidly our lips met
      —feverish, wet—
    forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
  in the immediacy of our fumbling union...
when the rest of the world became distant.

Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.

With all the understandable gloom, doom and despair over the coronavirus, I was reminded of this early poem of mine that used the term "corona" in a much more positive light. I wrote this poem around age 18 and it has been published by Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Webring. Keywords/Tags: Corona, coronavirus, touch, union, communion, sigh, sighs, expectation, unity, trumpets, heart, heartache, pounding, youth, virginity, first love, sex, arousal, union, ecstasy, consummation, consume, consumed, consecration, omen, comet, shooting star, talisman, moonrise, moon rising



Tillage
by Michael R. Burch

(a coronavirus poem about stasis and potential for recovery by reconnecting)

What stirs within me
is no great welling
straining to flood forth,
but an emptiness
waiting to be filled.

I am not an orchard
ready to be harvested,
but a field
rough and barren
waiting to be tilled.

Keywords/Tags: stasis, potential, hopelessness, hope, recovery, recovery from disaster, reconciliation, tillage, raw, barren, field, tabula rasa, blank slate, blank verse, isolation, seclusion, distress, distance, distancing, palimpsest, plow, plowing, sow, sowing, seed, planting, farm, farming, social behavior, society



Sweet Centerless Sixteen
by Michael R. Burch

Inconsolable as "love" had left your heart,
you woke this morning eager to pursue
warm lips again, or something "really cool"
on which to press your lips and leave their mark.

As breath upon a windowpane at dawn
soon glows, a spreading halo full of sun,
your thought of love blinks wildly... on and on...
then fizzles at the center, and is gone.



Thirty
by Michael R. Burch

Thirty crept upon me slowly
with feline caution and a slowly-twitching tail;
patiently she waited for the winds to shift;
now, claws unsheathed, she lies seething to assail
her helpless prey.

Keywords/Tags: thirty, age, aging, maturity, time, age, death, pain, creep, creeping, ambush, feline, predator, rhyme