Long Eastward Poems

Poems about Things that Break II
 
These are poems about things that break and/or shatter.
 
 
 
Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch
 
You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower...

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Groundhog day 2024 or Forty one days since 2023 Winter Solstice

Rather than be a day late
and dollar short, I opted   
to post poem acknowledging
the second of February,
where eponymous groundhog
gets his (most often male)
foretelling...

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Ya' gotta feel sorry for this ding-bat - 


The clouds were drifting eastward through a cool late-evening sky, as I was barreling down a road in eastern Tennessee. 
Whipping through the traffic in a new...

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At a Crossroad  ** 

            Treading down the         I      ...

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The Cowboy
A hundred thousand miles
were written on his face
He'd earned near every wrinkle
Did this cowboy known as "Jace"
He'd ridden cross the country
From Death Valley up to Maine
In weather full of sunshine
To the roughest hurricane
He owned...

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But we of the Three Tribes live undiscovered 
   In the reverberating stillness of the 
 Three Gorges...
And are therefore unknown to the warring mongol;
    His impassioned lusts -- his...

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If out of darkness comes light, then my life must be one ginormous ray of sunshine right about now. Coming out of a 14-year classroom coma, I am now awake, yet I continue to slumber...

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                                  ...

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Haiku Translations I

As the monks sip their morning tea,
chrysanthemums quietly blossom.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The fragrance of plum blossoms
on a foggy path:
the sun rising.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The sea...

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Schvitzing for more'n sixty hours without electricity
(visit https://www.aol.com/?ncid=
crosssellusaolc00000003 - for further details)

Courtesy rare derecho
killed four people
nearly forty eight hours ago
power outage affected more than
half a million people
in mid-Atlantic states.

Residents in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania
(the poet's hometown)
smack dab...

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Odyssey from Africa, Chapter 11 (d) cont...

Thus the boarding of the parties 
Was a speedy operation 
Very soon the whole flotilla
Sailed toward the open ocean

This wide bay from which the ships set
Sail is called the...

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North Richland Hills grew a rainbow I wanted to hold in my hand
Wand for wishing I don’t know what to reach-ask for?
Plethora is sunshine below the bow along your Texas land
Donned a different approach—your rainbow...

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Q:  Immediately after the Gog and Magog war what does the Sovereign LORD
      instruct the townspeople of Israel to do pertaining to Gog? Ezekiel 39:9

A:   "Then those...

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Odyssey from Africa 15b (Southland)

“Like an antelope in stature 
Yet they hopped along like sparrows!
On big hind limbs like a rabbit’s
With a rat-like tail behind them
 
“At the sight of such strange wonders
I was wakened...

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(Historical train-ride on the first Transcontinental Railroad in 1870 from Omaha to Ogden aboard the Union Pacific Railroad)     © 2009 (Jim Sularz)


I can hear the whistle blowing, 
two short bursts, it’s...

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Chapter 13c

In the tracks of these cetaceans 
For as long as he could follow 
So he said to Tor the shipwright 
"I will follow after Matto
 
“In the hope beyond all hoping 
That my boy might yet be living 
For my...

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CHAPTER 3 The River
 
While they paused to rest a moment 
Han gazed suddenly behind them
To the south a long way distant
Faintly rose a hazy ribbon
 
From the grassland; Han spoke quietly,
"Loved ones, we are...

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For the last five hundred years, posh “society,” is where the wealthiest and most influential people in the world mingled, inter-married and conducted business. If you’ve ever watched “Downton Abbey”, “The Gilded Age” or even...

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On this peaceful land where we live comfortably 
with the neighboring villagers sharing the sun and moon, 
stars and clouds, winds and waters, rains and snows;
we sow the seeds on the field, wander in the...

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On one night, 
is it because of a bewitched full moon?
while driving my rusty shaking junk car
I became Don Quixote de la Mancha 
mounted on Rozinante holding a lance under the arm aslant,
and with a...

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my chair was in the path of totality
a thin ribbon about seventy miles wide
moving West to East
it does this because of at the equator
Moon's shadow moves  eastward
at a greater velocity than Earth's
rotational velocity causing...

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Carefree in leisure time, one blasé tourist, 
almost happy, I once had collected a complicated stone;
after the sunny hours had ended and last opportunity
for keepsakes began.

In my hand the stone had kept all of its...

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In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and  void  darkness was upon the face of the deep And the Spirit of God  moved...

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Already noticeably marked
increase in daylight
yours truly courtesy affected
qua heliotropic phenomenon
finds me noggin gently being tugged
upward and westward ho toward sun
after dark mine talking head 
rests downward and eastward.

Soon very indistinct
environmental intimations 
regarding onomatopoeic
ubiquitous murmurings,
whereby old...

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I don't know when these lines ran off my shouldering lips this morning...
but I guessed they are spirit and being,
home and forest, evil and sorrow. 
I don't know that men are made of
two spirits &...

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