Issue 13

Winter 2003

Michael R Burch

Michael R. Burch is the poetry editor of The HyperTexts. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and his work has appeared in over 90 literary journals and sundry publications, including Poetry Magazine, Verse, Unlikely Stories, Light Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Eclectic Muse, The Aurorean, The Lyric, Lonzie’s Fried Chicken, Black Bear Review, Poetry SuperHighway, ByLine, Writer’s Journal, Penumbra, and Nebo.

 

What the Poet Sees What the poet sees, he sees as a swimmer underwater, watching the shoreline blur, sees through his breath's weightless bubbles . . . Both worlds grow obscure.   The Locker All the hollow clamor has died and what was contained, removed, reproved adulation or sentiment, left with the pungent darkness as remembered as the sudden light.     She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful 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 wayward moon hangs low and full. She was very strange, in a pleasant way, as the hummingbird flies madly still . . . so I drank my fill of her every word. What she knew of love, she demurred to say. She was meant to leave, as the wind must blow as the sun must set, as the rain must fall. Though she gave me all, I had nothing left. Long I smiled, bereft, in her receding glow.     Fountainhead 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, brushed by marble lips, or porcelain,-- one liquid kiss, one cool outburst from pale rosettes. What did it mean . . . to float awhirl on minute tides within the compass of your eyes, to feel your alabaster bust grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs seem hisses now; your eyes, serene, reflect the sun's pale tourmaline.   Ordinary Love 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, white . . . indescribably in love. Or so we say. Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray; you turn your back; you murmur to the night, "I love you," in the ordinary way. Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray . . . to warm ourselves. We do not touch, despite a love so indescribable. We say we're older now, that "love" has had its day. But that which love once countenanced, delight, still makes you indescribable. I say, "I love you," in the ordinary way.

 

© Michael R Burch

 

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