A Vain Word

A Vain Word by Michael R. Burch Oleanders at dawn preen extravagant whorls as I read in leaves’ Sanskrit brief moments remaining till sunset implodes, till the moon strands grey pearls under moss-stubbled oaks, full of whispers, complaining to the darkening autumn, how swiftly life goes— as I fled before love ... Now, through leaves trodden black, shivering, I wander as winter’s first throes of cool listless snow drench my cheeks, back and neck. I discerned in one season all eternities of grief, the specter of death sprawled out under the rose, the last consequence of faith in the flight of one leaf, the incontinence of age, as life’s bright torrent slows. O, where are you now?—I was timid, absurd. I would find comfort again in a vain word. Published by Chrysanthemum Winter Thoughts of Ann Rutledge by Michael R. Burch Winter was not easy, nor would the spring return. I knew you by your absence, as men are wont to burn with strange indwelling fire: such longings you inspire! But winter was not easy, nor would the sun relent from sculpting virgin images and how could I repent? I left quaint offerings in the snow, more maiden than I care to know. Ann Rutledge’s Irregular Quilt by Michael R. Burch based on “Lincoln the Unknown” by Dale Carnegie I. Her fingers “plied the needle” with “unusual swiftness and art” till Abe knelt down beside her: then her demoralized heart set Eros’s dart a-quiver; thus a crazy quilt emerged: strange stitches all a-kilter, all patterns lost. (Her host kept her vicarious laughter barely submerged.) II. Years later she’d show off the quilt with its uncertain stitches as evidence love undermines men’s plans and unevens women’s strictures (and a plethora of scriptures.) III. But O the sacred tenderness Ann’s reckless stitch contains and all the world’s felicities: rich cloth, for love’s fine gains, for sweethearts’ tremulous fingers and their bright, uncertain vows and all love’s blithe, erratic hopes (like now’s). IV. Years later on a pilgrimage, by tenderness obsessed, Dale Carnegie, drawn to her grave, found weeds in her place of rest and mowed them back, revealing the spot of Lincoln’s joy and grief (and his hope and his disbelief). V. Yes, such is the tenderness of love, and such are its disappointments. Love is a book of rhapsodic poems. Love is an grab bag of ointments. Love is the finger poised, the smile, the Question, perhaps, and the Answer? Love is the pain of betrayal, the two left feet of the dancer. VI. There were ladies of ill repute in his past. Or so he thought. Was it true? And yet he loved them, Ann (sweet Ann!), as tenderly as he loved you. She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful by Michael R. Burch She was very strange, and beautiful, like a violet mist enshrouding hills before night falls when the hoot owl calls and the cricket trills and the envapored 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 her all, I had nothing left ... yet I smiled, bereft, in her receding glow. Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea Fountainhead by Michael R. Burch 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. To Flower by Michael R. Burch (When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart. The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.) We are not long for this earth, I know— you and I, all our petals incurled, till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow. Is there love anywhere in this strange world? The Agave knows best when it's time to die and rages to life with such rapturous leaves her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high, she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes in love at all, she has left it behind to flower, to FLOWER. When darkness falls she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls: beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind, she never adored it, nor watches it go. Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow? At Wilfred Owen’s Grave by Michael R. Burch 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 unknown except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months with Gaukroger beside you in the trench, dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched your broken heart together and the fist began to pulse with life, so close to death. Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care of “ergotherapists” that you sensed life is only in the work, and made despair a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath, a mouthful’s merest air, inspired less than wrested from you, and which we confess we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air that even Sassoon failed to share, because a man in pieces is not healed by gauze, and breath’s transparent, unless we believe the words are true despite their lack of weight and float to us like chlorine—scalding eyes, and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate of boys who retched up life here, gagged on lies. Keywords/Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, fate, tragedy, quilt, Dale Carnegie, tribute