Sonnets Xxxiii-Xli

Sonnets XXXIII-XLI The Folly of Wisdom by Michael R. Burch She is wise in the way that children are wise, looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must bend down to her to understand. But she only smiles, and takes my hand. We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, so I smile, and I follow... And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves that flutter above us, and what she believes? I can almost remember?goes something like this: the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss. She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree that once was a fortress to someone like me rings wildly above us. Some things that we know we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow. This is a free verse sonnet originally published by Romantics Quarterly. The Communion of Sighs by Michael R. Burch There was a moment without the sound of trumpets or a shining light, but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist felt more than seen. I was eighteen, my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist. Expectation hung like a cry in the night, and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet. There was an instant... without words, but with a deeper communion, as clothing first, then inhibitions fell; liquidly our lips met ?feverish, wet? forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell, in the immediacy of our fumbling union... when the rest of the world became distant. Then the only light was the moon on the rise, and the only sound, the communion of sighs. This is one of my early free verse sonnets written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time. Abide by Michael R. Burch after Philip Larkin's "Aubade" It is hard to understand or accept mortality? such an alien concept: not to be. Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion, or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle. Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle. And so we abide... even in life, staring out across that dark brink. And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink, it is best not to drink (or, drinking, certainly not to think). Free verse sonnet published by Light Quarterly Free Fall by Michael R. Burch These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel where suns revolve around an axle star... Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours. Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel. Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell? To see is not to know, but you can feel the tug sometimes?the gravity, the shell as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel toward some draining revelation. Air? too thin to grasp, to breath. Such pressure. Gasp. The stars invert, electric, everywhere. And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure... two beings pale, intent to fall forever around each other?fumbling at love’s tether... now separate, now distant, now together. Free verse sonnet published by Sonnet Scroll Once by Michael R. Burch for Beth Once when her kisses were fire incarnate and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame, when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes, leaving me listlessly sighing her name... Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling, as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist, when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me all the while as her lips did more wildly insist... Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant, I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing that I vowed all my former vows to recant... Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed? this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed. Sonnet published by The Lyric At Once by Michael R. Burch for Beth Though she was fair, though she sent me the epistle of her love at once and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer, I did not love her at once. Though she would dare pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once, the dark, haggard keeper of the lair, I did not love her at once. Though she would share the all of her being, to heal me at once, yet more than her touch I was unable bear. I did not love her at once. And yet she would care, and pour out her essence... and yet?there was more! I awoke from long darkness, and yet?she was there. I loved her the longer; I loved her the more because I did not love her at once. Sonnet published by The Lyric Twice by Michael R. Burch Now twice she has left me and twice I have listened and taken her back, remembering days when love lay upon us and sparkled and glistened with the brightness of dew through a gathering haze. But twice she has left me to start my life over, and twice I have gathered up embers, to learn: rekindle a fire from ash, soot and cinder and softly it sputters, refusing to burn. Sonnet published by The Lyric Moments by Michael R. Burch There were moments full of promise, like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring, when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips seemed everything. There are moments strangely empty full of pale unearthly twilight?how the cold stars stare!? when to be without you is a dark enchantment the night and I share. The Harvest of Roses by Michael R. Burch I have not come for the harvest of roses? the poets' mad visions, their railing at rhyme... for I have discerned what their writing discloses: weak words wanting meaning, beat torsioning time. Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer? images weak, too forced not to fail; gathered by poets who worship their luster, they shimmer, impendent, resplendently pale. Sonnet published by The Raintown Review Keywords/Tags: child, childhood, children, wisdom, years, time, life, light, darkness, night, teen, heaven, hell, world, death, mortality