Author: Michael Burch

Indescribable our love and still we say With eyes averted, turning out the light, “I love you,” in the ordinary […]

She is wise in the way that children are wise, Looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must […]

She was very strange, and beautiful, as the violet mist upon the hills before night falls when the hoot owl […]

I, too, have stood paralyzed at the helm Watching onrushing, inevitable disaster. I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) […]

She gathered lilacs And arrayed them in her hair; Tonight, she taught the wind to be free. She kept her […]

The earth is full of rhythms so precise The octave of the crystal can produce A trillion oscillations, yet not […]

… Among the shadows of the groaning elms, Amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves… … Once there were paths […]

See how her hair has thinned: it does not seem / Like hair at all, but like the airy moult […]

All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent […]

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar, A rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name. The world forgot […]

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,- The city is a garment stretched so thin Her festive colors bleed […]

Walk here among the walking scepters. Learn Inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave To bone this tightly if their hearts […]

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert When every flower springs to life at once, But joy […]

Serene, almost angelic, The lights of the city attend Upon lumbering behemoths Shrilly screeching displeasure; they say That nothing is […]

To at last be indestructible, a poem Must first glow, almost flammable, upon A thing inert, as gray, as dull […]

She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget,” Dove-white on her car’s window, and the wren, Because her heart is […]

A week before the Armistice, you died. They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s, Then plant your bones near […]

Jeremy hit the ball today, Over the fence and far away. So very, very far away A neighbor had to […]

I did not delight in love so much As in a kiss like linnets’ wings, The flutterings of a pulse […]

Poetry, I found you Where at last they chained and bound you; With devices all around you To torture and […]

Her predatory eye, The single feral iris, Scans. Her raptor beak, All jagged sharp-edged thrust, Juts. Her hard talon, Clenched […]

Will there be starlight Tonight While she gathers Damask And lilac And sweet-scented heathers? And will she find flowers, Or […]

Long-vacant eyes Now lodged in clear glass, A-swim with pale arms As delicate as angels’ … You are beyond all […]

I held the switch in trembling fingers, asked Why existence felt so small, so purposeless, Like a minnow wriggling feebly […]

From what I know of death, I’ll side with those Who’d like to have a say in how it goes: […]

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed, Was ripped from books of “verse” that read like prose. I found […]

A black ringlet Curls to lie At the nape of her neck, Glistening with sweat In the evaporate moonlight… This […]

For my wife, Elizabeth Harris Burch, and my mother, Christine Ena Burch There never was a fonder smile Than mother’s […]

Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills; Cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway; And night bends near, a deepening […]

You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope When every lovely Rainbow bright and chill Reflects your Will? You […]