Where Does the Butterfly Go

Where Does the Butterfly Go? by Michael R. Burch for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba Where does the butterfly go when lightning rails, when thunder howls, when hailstones scream, when winter scowls, when nights compound dark frosts with snow ... Where does the butterfly go? Where does the rose hide its bloom when night descends oblique and chill beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill? When the only relief's a banked fire's glow, where does the butterfly go? And where shall the spirit flee when life is harsh, too harsh to face, and hope is lost without a trace? Oh, when the light of life runs low, where does the butterfly go? Epitaph for a Palestinian Child by Michael R. Burch I lived as best I could, and then I died. Be careful where you step: the grave is wide. After the Deluge by Michael R. Burch She was kinder than light to an up-reaching flower and sweeter than rain to the bees in their bower where anemones blush at the affections they shower, and love’s shocking power. She shocked me to life, but soon left me to wither. I was listless without her, nor could I be with her. I fell under the spell of her absence’s power. in that calamitous hour. Like blithe showers that fled repealing spring’s sweetness; like suns’ warming rays sped away, with such fleetness ... she has taken my heart— alas, our completeness! I now wilt in pale beams of her occult remembrance. Burn by Michael R. Burch for Trump Sunbathe, ozone baby, till your parched skin cracks in the white-hot flash of radiation. Incantation from your pale parched lips shall not avail; you made this hell. Now burn. Burn, Ovid by Michael R. Burch Sunday School, Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973: I sat imagining watery folds of pale silk encircling her waist. Explicit sex was the day’s “hot” topic (how breathlessly I imagined hers) as she taught us the perils of lust fraught with inhibition. I found her unaccountably beautiful, rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue: adultery, fornication, masturbation, sodomy. Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush of her unrouged cheeks, by her pale lips accented only by a slight quiver, a trepidation. What did those lustrous folds foretell of our uncommon desire? Why did she cross and uncross her legs lovely and long in their taupe sheaths? Why did her breasts rise pointedly, as if indicating a direction? “Come unto me, (unto me),” together, we sang, cheek to breast, lips on lips, devout, afire, my hands up her skirt, her pants at her knees: all night long, all night long, in the heavenly choir. Sex 101 by Michael R. Burch That day the late spring heat steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus crawling its way up the backwards slopes of Nowheresville, North Carolina ... Where we sat exhausted from the day’s skulldrudgery and the unexpected waves of muggy, summer-like humidity ... Giggly first graders sat two abreast behind senior high students sprouting their first sparse beards, their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ... The most unlikely coupling— Lambert, 18, the only college prospect on the varsity basketball team, the proverbial talldarkhandsome swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ... Beside him, Wanda, 13, bespectacled, in her primproper attire and pigtails, staring up at him, fawneyed, disbelieving ... And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her, as she twitched impaled on his finger like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes, I knew ... that love is a forlorn enterprise, that I would never understand it. At Cædmon’s Grave by Michael R. Burch At the monastery of Whitby, on a day when the sun sank through the sea, and the gulls shrieked wildly, jubilant, free, while the wind and time blew all around, I paced those dusk-enamored grounds and thought I heard the steps resound of Carroll, Stoker and of Bede who walked there, too, their spirits freed —perhaps by God, perhaps by need— to write, and with each line, remember the glorious light of Cædmon’s ember, scorched tongues of flame words still engender. Here, as darkness falls, at last we meet. I lay this pale garland of words at his feet. Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD) loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian, the Measurer's might and his mind-plans, the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord, established earth's fearful foundations. Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof for the sons of men: Holy Creator, mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord, afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty! Children by Michael R. Burch There was a moment suspended in time like a swelling drop of dew about to fall, impendent, pregnant with possibility ... when we might have made ... anything, anything we dreamed, almost anything at all, coalescing dreams into reality. Oh, the love we might have fashioned out of a fine mist and the nightly sparkle of the cosmos and the rhythms of evening! But we were young, and what might have been is now a dark abyss of loss and what is left is not worth saving. But, oh, you were lovely, child of the wild moonlight, attendant tides and doting stars, and for a day, what little we partook of all that lay before us seemed so much, and passion but a force with which to play. Davenport Tomorrow by Michael R. Burch Davenport tomorrow ... all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun. Now it is always summer and the bees buzz in cesspools, adapted to a new life. There are no flowers, but the weeds, being hardier, have survived. The small town has become a city of millions; there is no longer a sea, only a huge sewer, but the children don't mind. They still study rocks and stars, but biology is a forgotten science ... after all, what is life? Davenport tomorrow ... all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills whispered wonders of long-ago.