Moments Poem by Michael Burch

Moments
by Michael R. Burch

There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.

There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare! —
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.



Love Has a Southern Flavor
by Michael R. Burch

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle's spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume...

Love's Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations' dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree's
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight...

Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.

Published by The Lyric, Contemporary Sonnet, The Eclectic Muse, Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Setu (India) , Victorian Violet Press and Trinacria



Infinity
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?

Might I lift you tonight from earth's wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity... windswept and blue.

This poem was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses. I was paid a whopping $10, my first cash payment. It was subsequently published by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Poetry Life & Times, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse. This poem was originally longer, but I was never happy with the longer version. I thought the first two stanzas were superior to the remainder of the poem, and at some point, years later, it occurred to me to let the poem end where it does now. It was only after I pared the poem down to the first two stanzas that I considered it publishable. I now consider it to be one of my best poems. This is one of my early poems that made me feel like a "real poet, " along with "Reckoning, " "Playmates, " "Time, " "Am I" and a few others. I wrote the longer poem as a teenager, to no one in particular, but after I met Beth I revised the poem and dedicated it to her, as the lover and soul mate I had been searching for. The closing lines say that I, too, have felt darkness and despair, and have felt utterly alone. But the hope of the poem is that we are not alone. This poem is my "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Keywords/Tags: moments, moment, love and life, love and dreams, love and art, love and friendship, night, nights, stars, time, infinity, dream, dreams, dreaming, dreamed