The Peripheries of Love

The Peripheries of Love by Michael R. Burch Through waning afternoons we glide the watery peripheries of love. A silence, a quietude falls. Above us—the sagging pavilions of clouds. Below us—rough pebbles slowly worn smooth grate in the gentle turbulence of yesterday’s forgotten rains. Later, the moon like a virgin lifts her stricken white face and the waters rise toward some unfathomable shore. We sway gently in the wake of what stirs beneath us, yet leaves us unmoved ... curiously motionless, as though twilight might blur the effects of proximity and distance, as though love might be near— as near as a single cupped tear of resilient dew or a long-awaited face. Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Magazine, Boston Poetry Magazine, Triplopia, Shadows Ink, E Mobius Pi, Underground Poets, Emotions Literary Magazine, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, Poetically Speaking, The Poetic Muse, Poet’s Haven, Poetic Voices, Nutty Stories (South Africa) and Gostinaya (in a Russian translation by Yelena Dubrovin)