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Observance by Michael R. Burch Here the hills are old and rolling carefully in their old age; on the horizon youthful mountains bathe themselves in windblown fountains... By dying leaves and falling raindrops, I have traced time's starts and stops, and I have known the years to pass almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops... For here the valleys fill with sunlight to the brim, then empty again, and it seems that only I notice how the years flood out, and in... This is an early poem that made me feel like a “real poet.” I wrote it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student, around age 17. "Observance" was originally published by Nebo as "Reckoning." It was later published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, There is Something in the Autumn (anthology) and Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: seasons, time, loss, lost, lonely, loneliness, longing, alienation, leaf, leaves, leave, leaving, bereavement, death The Wonder Boys by Michael R. Burch (for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric, who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and a fine poet in his own right) The stars were always there, too-bright cliches: scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew as baffled poets winged keyed kites--amazed, in dream of shocks that suddenly came true... but came almost as static--background noise, a song out of the cosmos no one hears, or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys, lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared. They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke of words poured from their overheated hearts. The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope... You will not find them here; they blew away-- in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung by fingertips to satellites. They strayed too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young, their words are with us still. Devout and fey, they wink at us whenever skies are gray. Originally published by The Lyric What Works by Michael R. Burch for David Gosselin What works-- hewn stone; the blush the iris shows the sun; the lilac’s pale-remembered bloom. The frenzied fly: mad-lively, gay, as seconds tick his time away, his sentence--one brief day in May, a period. And then decay. A frenzied rhyme’s mad tip-toed time, a ballad’s languid as the sea, seek, striving--immortality. When gloss peels off, what works will shine. When polish fades, what works will gleam. When intellectual prattle pales, the dying buzzing in the hive of tedious incessant bees, what works will soar and wheel and dive and milk all honey, leap and thrive, and teach the pallid poem to seethe. Published by The Chained Muse You! by Michael R. Burch For forty years You have not spoken to me; I heard the dull hollow echo of silence as though strange communion between us. For forty years You would not open to me; You remained closed, hard and tense, like a clenched fist. For forty years You have not broken me with Your alien ways, prevarications and distance. Like a child dismissed, I have watched You prey upon the hope in me, knowing "mercy" is chance and "heaven"--a list. Your Pull by Michael R. Burch for Beth You were like sunshine and rain-- begetting rainbows, full of contradictions, like the intervals between light and shadow. That within you which I most opposed drew me closer still, as a magnet exerts its unyielding pull on insensate steel. Autumn Conundrum by Michael R. Burch It's not that every leaf must finally fall, it's just that we can never catch them all. Piercing the Shell by Michael R. Burch If we strip away all the accouterments of war, perhaps we'll discover what the heart is for. Leaf Fall by Michael R. Burch Whatever winds encountered soon resolved to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall. In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each dry leaf into its place and built a high, soft bastion against earth's gravitron? a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright impediment to fling ourselves upon. And nothing in our laughter as we fell into those leaves was like the autumn's cry of also falling. Nothing meant to die could be so bright as we, so colorful? clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again. Herbsttag ("Autumn Day") by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go. Lay your long shadows over the sundials and over the meadows, let the free winds blow. Command the late fruits to fatten and shine; O, grant them another Mediterranean hour! Urge them to completion, and with power convey final sweetness to the heavy wine. Who has no house now, never will build one. Who's alone now, shall continue alone; he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends, and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down, restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend. Originally published by Measure Leave Taking by Michael R. Burch Brilliant leaves abandon battered limbs to waltz upon ecstatic winds until they die. But the barren and embittered trees, lament the frolic of the leaves and curse the bleak November sky. Now, as I watch the leaves' high flight before the fading autumn light, I think that, perhaps, at last I may have learned what it means to say goodbye. Something (for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba) Something inescapable is lost— lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is gone— gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn, scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass and remembrance. Something unforgettable is past— blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less, which finality swept into a corner... where it lies in dust and cobwebs and silence.
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