Juvenilia: Early Poems Xii

Juvenilia: Early Poems XII Because You Came to Me by Michael R. Burch for Beth Because you came to me with sweet compassion and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair, I do not love you after any fashion, but wildly, in despair. Because you came to me in my black torment and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment they melt, I am undone. Because I am undone, you have remade me as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me and bower me, somehow. I wrote the first version of this poem around age 18, then revised it 30 years later and dedicated the new version to my wife Beth.  Infinity by Michael R. Burch for Beth Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair? Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach, then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach? Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage? Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too, have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue. This is one of my early poems that made me feel like a “real poet.” I wrote the poem as a teenager, circa age 18, to no one in particular, but after I met Beth I revised the poem and dedicated it to her, as the lover and soul mate I had been searching for. The closing lines say that I, too, have felt darkness and despair, and have felt utterly alone. But the hope of the poem is that we are not alone. This poem is my “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Winter by Michael R. Burch The rose of love’s bright promise lies torn by her own thorn; her scent was sweet but at her feet the pallid aphids mourn. The lilac of devotion has felt the winter hoar and shed her dress; companionless, she shivers—nude, forlorn. I wrote "Winter" around age 20; it has been published by Songs of Innocence, The Aurorean and Contemporary Rhyme. Desdemona by Michael R. Burch Though you possessed the moon and stars, you are bound to fate and wed to chance. Your lips deny they crave a kiss; your feet deny they ache to dance. Your heart imagines wild romance. Though you cupped fire in your hands and molded incandescent forms, you are barren now, and—spent of flame— the ashes that remain are borne toward the sun upon a storm. You, who demanded more, have less, your heart within its cells of sighs held fast by chains of misery, confined till death for peddling lies— imprisonment your sense denies. You, who collected hearts like leaves and pressed each once within your book, forgot. None—winsome, bright or rare— not one was worth a second look. My heart, as others, you forsook. But I, though I loved you from afar through silent dawns, and gathered rue from gardens where your footsteps left cold paths among the asters, knew— each moonless night the nettles grew and strangled hope, where love dies too. I wrote "Desdemona" around age 22; it has been published by Penny Dreadful, Carnelian, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry and Poetry Life & Times. Fairest Diana by Michael R. Burch Fairest Diana, princess of dreams, born to be loved and yet distant and lone, why did you linger—so solemn, so lovely— an orchid ablaze in a crevice of stone? Was not your heart meant for tenderest passions? Surely your lips—for wild kisses, not vows! Why then did you languish, though lustrous, becoming a pearl of enchantment cast before sows? Fairest Diana, fragile as lilac, as willful as rainfall, as true as the rose; how did a stanza of silver-bright verse come to be bound in a book of dull prose? Published by Tucumcari Literary Journal and Night Roses I believe this poem was written in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, around the time it became apparent that the lovely Diana Spencer was going to marry into the British royal family. The Last Enchantment by Michael R. Burch Oh, Lancelot, my truest friend, how time has thinned your ragged mane and pinched your features; still you seem though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged. Your sword hand is, as ever, ready, although the time for swords has passed. Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady meeting mine ... you must not ask. The time is not, nor ever shall be, for Merlyn’s words were only words; and now his last enchantment wanes, and we must put aside our swords ... Originally published by Trinacria I believe I wrote this poem in my early twenties, around 1980. I distinctly remember working on the poem on a flight to England in 1982 because an attractive girl was sitting beside me on the plane and I remember wishing she would ask me what I was doing. No such luck! According to my notes the poem was revised and filed in 1984, but it remains largely as it was originally written. Beckoning by Michael R. Burch Yesterday the wind whispered my name while the blazing locks of her rampant mane lay heavy on mine. And yesterday I saw the way the wind caressed tall pines in forests laced by glinting streams and thick with tangled vines. And though she reached for me in her sleep, the touch I felt was Time's. I wrote "Beckoning" around age 18. Keywords/Tags: early, early poems, juvenilia, child, childhood, boy, boyhood, teen, teenage, teenager, student, high school, college, poems, poetry