Long Leave taking Poems

Beckoning
by Michael R. Burch 
 
Yesterday the wind whispered my name
while the blazing locks
of her rampant mane
lay heavy on mine.
And yesterday
I saw the way
the wind caressed tall pines
in forests laced by glinting streams
and thick with...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems by Michael R. Burch

In the Whispering Night
by Michael R. Burch

In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
while...

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Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have...

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Come Down
by Michael R. Burch

for Harold Bloom

Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...

and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be...

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What Good Are Our Tears?
by Michael R. Burch

What good are our tears?
They will not spare the dying their anguish.
What good is our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems VII

These are early poems I wrote as a boy and as a teenager.

The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch

The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.

The weak implore Fate;
bold men...

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I wonder ?, have pondered ?, have analyzed the boxes, 
the cages, the walls my little Girl, my young Woman, 
finds herself packaged in, trapped in, stuck behind, 
believing that they have come into being...

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He is caught between one life and another
while my pain lengthens like a shadow of the moon
We are like leaves, played with by the wind

O lengthening dark vision
reaching across our lives
It came, at last, without...

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I follow the stars, the moon and the sun, touch you through the winds wings 

I love in a place you can not follow me, not yet, one day you will come

Precious moments soaked in...

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I swept the floor, but it's dirty again...pretty much what I expected.
The accumulation of dirt and grim is something safe to have projected.
If cleanliness is a thing which one truly desires
Then cleaning is an act...

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There are these dreams you 
never want to wake from.
Last night you sat in a theatre, 
watching a movie, marveling at Spain, 
unrolling before your eyes, a memory
of the Pyranees you never wanted
to leave, dream...

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Leave Taking
by Michael R. Burch 
 
Brilliant leaves abandon battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.
 
But the barren and embittered trees,
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak November sky . ....

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It is said that if only one person remembers you
then you will live two lives;
one after you leave this world
the other within that person who still recalls you,
but when you are totally forgotten,
what then?

Perhaps ghosts...

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We’d said goodbye, were at the door
When my favorite little boy
Came running with just one last hug,
The kind I most enjoy.

“You can’t leave, Nana. I won’t let you!”
Clinging to me, tight.
I’m sure he knew I...

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