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 we have 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.
Keywords/Tags: child, children, childhood, time, possibility, potential, dream, dreams, love, passion, play, force, mist, fog, sparkle, cosmos, moonlight, tides, stars, desire, longing
Besieged
by Michael R. Burch
Life—the disintegration of the flesh
before the fitful elevation of the soul
upon improbable wings?
Life—it is all we know,
the travail one bright season brings ...
Now the fruit hangs,
impendent, pregnant with death,
as the hurricane builds and flings
its white columns and banners of snow
and the rout begins.
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.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
O what forgotten providence,
to which my soul falls victim
on and off and on again,
indecision marking each page
with dog eared brutality.
Know not, want not, we
could never truly return
a moment as inconsequential
as that which marks. . .
Providential Dreams whose ends
are more mutably cataclysmic
than their begins.
Can only be born of indecisive
wonderlust,
Impendent scenes are nothing but
Providential Dreams
As providential dreams are nothing
But necessity.