The Folly Of Wisdom Poem by Michael Burch

The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch

She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.

We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow...

And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.

She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker's knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me

rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, Famous Poets and Poems, Litera, Poetry Life & Times and Freshet



Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch



The Aery Faery Princess
by Michael R. Burch

for Keira

There once was a princess lighter than fluff
made of such gossamer stuff—
the down of a thistle, butterflies' wings,
the faintest high note the hummingbird sings,
moonbeams on garlands, strands of bright hair...
I think she's just you when you're floating on air.

Published in Whimsy/Poems for Big Kids and A Bouquet of Poems for children of all ages



The Endeavors of Lips

How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love's strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love...

Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love...

"O, let down your hair! "—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love...

was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.

Published by Romantics Quarterly and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)



Keywords/Tags: folly, wisdom, children, wise, know, knowing, understand, understanding, life, death, life and death, lifespan, life's journey, grave, time, years, dark, leaves, trees, prince, toad, kiss, princess, fairy, faery, fairytale, coffin, fortress, bloodletting, maple, syrup