Michael Burch

Indescribable our love and still we say With eyes averted, turning out the light, “I love you,” in the ordinary way And tug the coverlet where once we lay, All suntanned limbs entangled, shivering,

She was very strange, and beautiful, as the violet mist upon the hills before night falls when the hoot owl calls and the cricket trills And the envapored moon hangs low and full. She

She gathered lilacs And arrayed them in her hair; Tonight, she taught the wind to be free. She kept her secrets In a silver locket; Her companions were starlight and mystery. She danced all

… Among the shadows of the groaning elms, Amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves… … Once there were paths that led to coracles That clung to piers like loosening barnacles… … where we

All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent darkness As remembered as the sudden light. Originally published by The Raintown Review

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,- The city is a garment stretched so thin Her festive colors bleed into the night, And everywhere bright seams, unraveling, Now spill their brilliant contents out

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert When every flower springs to life at once, But joy is an illusion to the expert: The Bedouin has learned how not to want.

To at last be indestructible, a poem Must first glow, almost flammable, upon A thing inert, as gray, as dull as stone, Then bend this way and that, and slowly cool At arms-length, something

A week before the Armistice, you died. They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s, Then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie Between two privates, sacrificed like Christ To politics, your poetry

I did not delight in love so much As in a kiss like linnets’ wings, The flutterings of a pulse so soft The heart remembers, as it sings: To bathe there was its transport,

Her predatory eye, The single feral iris, Scans. Her raptor beak, All jagged sharp-edged thrust, Juts. Her hard talon, Clenched in pinched expectation, Waits. Her clipped wings, Preened against reality, Tremble. Originally published by

Long-vacant eyes Now lodged in clear glass, A-swim with pale arms As delicate as angels’ … You are beyond all hope Of salvage now… And yet I would pause, No fear!, To once touch

From what I know of death, I’ll side with those Who’d like to have a say in how it goes: Just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker), And real fahr off,

A black ringlet Curls to lie At the nape of her neck, Glistening with sweat In the evaporate moonlight… This is what I remember Now that I cannot forget. And tonight, If I have

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills; Cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway; And night bends near, a deepening shade of gray; The bass concerto of a bullfrog fills What silence there once

Moonlight spills down vacant sills, Illuminates an empty bed. Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates Wan silver circles, left unread By its companion unmoved now By anything that lies ahead. I watch the

Through waning afternoons we glide The watery peripheries of love. A silence, a quietude falls. Above us–the sagging pavilions of clouds. Below us–rough pebbles slowly worn smooth Grate in the gentle turbulence Of yesterday’s