Children's Poems III
Children's Poems III
These are poems for children and poems about children and their mothers, fathers, grandmother, grandfathers and extended families.
Success
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
We need our children to keep us humble
between toast and marmalade;
there is no time for a ticker-tape parade
before bed, no award, no bright statuette
to be delivered for mending skinned knees,
no wild bursts of approval for shoveling snow.
A kiss is the only approval they show;
to leave us—the first great success they achieve.
Precipice
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
They will teach you to scoff at love
from the highest, windiest precipice of reason.
Do not believe them.
There is no place safe for you to fall
save into the arms of love.
Love’s Extreme Unction
by Michael R. Burch
Lines composed during Jeremy’s first high school football game (he played tuba), while I watched his mother watch him.
Within the intimate chapels of her eyes—
devotions, meditations, reverence.
I find in them Love’s very residence
and hearing the ardent rapture of her sighs
I prophesy beatitudes to come,
when Love like hers commands us, “All be One!”
Passages on Fatherhood
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
He is my treasure,
and by his happiness I measure
my own worth.
Four years old,
with diamonds and gold
bejeweled in his soul.
His cherubic beauty
is felicity
to simplicity and passion—
for a baseball thrown
or an ice-cream cone
or eggshell-blue skies.
It's hard to be 'wise'
when the years
career through our lives
and bees in their hives
test faith
and belief
while Time, the great thief,
with each falling leaf
foreshadows grief.
The wisdom of the ages
and prophets and mages
and doddering sages
is useless
unless
it encompasses this:
his kiss.
What does it mean?
by Michael R. Burch
for Jeremy
His little hand, held fast in mine.
What does it mean? What does it mean?
If he were not here, the sun would not shine,
nor the grass grow half as green.
What does it mean?
His arms around my neck, his cheek
snuggling so warm against my own...
What does it mean?
If life's a garden, he's the fairest
flower ever sown,
the sweetest ever seen.
What does it mean?
And when he whispers sweet and low,
'What does it mean? '
It means, my son, I love you so.
Sometimes that's all we need to know.
Keywords/Tags: children's poems, children, child, childhood, boy, girl, boyhood, girlhood, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, family, families, sister, brother
Copyright ©
Michael Burch
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