Long Earthward Poems

Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace,
you climb, skittish kite...

What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there,
so that all that remains is to
fall?

Only a...

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Poems about Butterflies and Bees



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as butterfly wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Album
by Michael R. Burch

I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were,...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

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Poems about Flight, Flying, and Birds (I)



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

It is the nature of loveliness to vanish
as hummingbird wings, batting against nothingness
seek transcendence...



Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch

Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching...

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*Image of The Collection Plate by TPW.

The Epiphany of Three Men of the Cloth

My submission is of an objective accounting that had scintillated at my workplace yond the mid-'70s. It had spun into a resplendent...

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ZEN DEATH HAIKU III

Spring
stirs the clouds
in the sky's teabowl
—Kikusha-ni, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight I saw
how the peony crumples
in the fire's embers
—Katoh Shuhson, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Both victor and vanquished are dewdrops:
flashes...

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CHAPTER 4 The Eagle (continued)

Swinging up it glanced the raptor
Merely brushing through its wing-plumes
But the eagle lost its balance 
And released its hold on Rosy
 
Who then plummeted in freefall
But the bird regained its rhythm 
And hard turning...

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*Image of What Happens When I Put ... by UMC.

The Collection Plate,

'Tis a simple sacred place of worship bearing no weight, whereto, one's faith unchallenged, accepted universally.

A complement of thrice their numbers, religious qualities as...

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Into the buoyant blue of a summer sky
I throw my fortune and my hopes.
With wings and wonder I survey
the world above and need some time
up there before descending back to earth.

Advancing throttle up I climb,...

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A chimney on a low rise standing sentinel 
On the loosely scattered outskirts of town.
A reminder of an old house built by hand, 
The home around the hearth long fallen down.

The silvery frost covering the...

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On the day after Christmas, they started appearing,
cast out of houses, stripped of their finery,
lying crooked in the gutter, garbage bags flanking.

My brothers and I walked to school
and halfway there, three blocks away,
was a steep...

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Lost, to the darkness, deep ...

This bleak sojourn I have made times on end,
dipping my eyes to the dreadful forms that mock me,
a maelstrom of words spinning my mind,
to pinch off the oppressive stench of...

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From its pillowy overlay, the Sun emerges
Bright saturized yellow, ultraviolet rays,
Enough to burn and blind and sting,
glances down on mankind,
To see what they got up to during the night.

      ...

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Bed time story

  Night sky stood still inky dark and gloomy
  There came a light that flickered zigzagging behind the clouds
  a sudden resounding loud sound of cymbals
  Heavy pouring rain...

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Perfection!

The eyes, evenly spaced, one eye and another, one to a side
The eyes warn of the precipice, find the water, search for prey
The ears hear the risk not seen, one ear and another, one to...

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Solitude sounds good on balance, yet perhaps that is just me.
There is the implication of loneliness, of nobody to talk to,
and I think of the many people for whom the pain of being alone
is immense,...

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We’re the Titanic generation
Sailing the seven seas;
Partying with our Captain;
Living a life of ease.
Not knowing the message
Found in that communiqué;
Not heeding the warning
For our Captain – The US of A.

We’re listening to the music
And dancing...

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I round a bend in the trail ...

And gasp, literally ...
The scene before me takes my breath away
And I stop, transfixed by the sheer breadth of the panorama
The shimmering span of Crater Lake ...

Clear, crystalline...

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My eyes are all out of breath

A day such as this
                        ...

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outside
inventoried oval-stoned
cathedrals appealing
chiming crimes of passion
woke citronella
fog
hung in cement-hamocked snowdrifts
cloaked slow on slick-stained windowsides
tenement sheets
with the pomegranate notes
of rhythms unrhymed
   while all the uptown laundromarts
rising up
from insomniac-scrambled sidewalks
corked-copper moon tumbling earthward
like a sweet
sweatshredded...

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Earlier in the month but lately begun, 
(Or was it perhaps the last one, the one before-November?
I know of a surety that it was a time uncoated by congeries 
Of most alabastrine snow, and that...

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A collaborative poem, written in renga format, or "linked-verse", by Timothy Hicks and Jesse Whitehead.

Verses in normal font are by me.
Verses in italic are by Jesse Whitehead.



January jest
drawing mustaches
in the newspaper

coffee to warm the hands
walking...

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There is freedom waiting for you
“What if I fall?” you ask.
My dear, 
What if you fly?

    And as you open your wings 
        Like bones...

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night’s realm lays in great forests dark and deep
strong tall trees stand in brooding stolid indifference
barren twisted limbs reach deeply into clear black sky
grasping fruitlessly full moon’s piercing cold white beams 
casting grey sinister shadows...

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The babies are coming, the babies are coming
And there are enough to go 'round.
In just a few days or perhaps one short week
They will be here and we'll have our first peek
At two little strangers...

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