Early Poems XX

Early Poems XX These are my early poems or juvenilia. Paradise by Michael R. Burch, age 15 There’s a sparkling stream And clear blue lake A home to beaver, Duck and drake Where the waters flow And the winds are soft And the sky is full Of birds aloft Where the long grass waves In the gentle breeze And the setting sun Is a pure cerise Where the gentle deer Though timid and shy Are not afraid As we pass them by Where the morning dew Sparkles in the grass And the lake’s as clear As a looking glass Where the trees grow straight And tall and green Where the air is pure And fresh and clean Where the bluebird trills Her merry song As robins and skylarks Sing along A place where nature Is at her best A place of solitude Of quiet and rest This is one of my very earliest poems, written as a song in the 9th or 10th grade. Stewark Island (Ambiguity) by Michael R. Burch, age 17 Seas are like tears— they are never far away. I have fled them now these eighteen years, but I am nearer them today than I ever have been. Oh, I never could bear the warm, salty water or the cool comfort here in the shade of an altar sweeter than sin ... Sweeter than sin, yet cleansing, like love; still its feel to doomed skin either too little or too much of whatever it is. Seas and tears are like life— ridiculous, ambiguous. Rag Doll by Michael R. Burch, age 17 On an angry sea a rag doll is tossed back and forth between cruel waves that have marred her easy beauty and ripped away her clothes. And her arms, once smoothly tanned, are gashed and torn and peeling as she dances to the waters’ rockings and reelings. She’s a rag doll now, a toy of the sea, and never before has she been so free, or so uneasy. She’s slammed by the hammering waves, the flesh shorn away from her bones, and her silent lips must long to scream, and her corpse must long to find its home. For she’s a rag doll now, at the mercy of all the sea’s relentless power, cruelly being ravaged with every passing hour. Her eyes are gone; her lips are swollen shut to the pounding waves whose waters reached out to fill her mouth with puddles of agony. Her limbs are limp; her skull is crushed; her hair hangs like seaweed in trailing tendrils draped across a never-ending sea. For she’s a rag doll now, a worn-out toy with which the waves will play ten thousand thoughtless games until her bed is made. Keyword/Tags: early, juvenilia, animal, nature, paradise, earth, eden, edenic, water, lake, Island, rag doll