For All That I Remembered
For All That I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
Published by The Raintown Review, The Eclectic Muse, Kritya, Gostinaya (Russian translation by Yelena Dubrovin), Boston Poetry Magazine, Freshet, Jewish Letter
Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
The Poem of Poems
by Michael R. Burch
This is my Poem of Poems, for you.
Every word ineluctably true:
I love you.
Practice Makes Perfect
by Michael R. Burch
I have a talent for sleep;
it’s one of my favorite things.
Thus when I sleep, I sleep deep ...
at least till the stupid clock rings.
I frown as I squelch its damn beep,
then fling it aside to resume
my practice for when I’ll sleep deep
in a silent and undisturbed tomb.
The Last Enchantment
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, Lancelot, my truest friend,
how time has thinned your ragged mane
and pinched your features; still you seem
though, much, much changed—somehow unchanged.
Your sword hand is, as ever, ready,
although the time for swords has passed.
Your eyes are fierce, and yet so steady
meeting mine...you must not ask.
The time is not, nor ever shall be,
for Merlyn’s words were only words;
and now his last enchantment wanes,
and we must put aside our swords...
Premonition
by Michael R. Burch
Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each unembraceable lover.
They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their forced laughter’s the wine...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion...
and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon”...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon...
and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.
And I know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
to be wiped clean, like slate, by the Eraser, Fate,
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined...
You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking sagely above...
Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.
Survivors
by Michael R. Burch
In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:
a shiver of “empathy.”
We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death
like a turtle retracting its neck.
Reflections on the Loss of Vision
by Michael R. Burch
The sparrow that cries from the shelter of an ancient oak tree and the squirrels
that dash in delight through the treetops as the first snow glistens and swirls,
remind me so much of my childhood and how the world seemed to me then,
that it seems if I tried
and just closed my eyes,
I could once again be nine or ten.
The rabbits that hide in the bushes where the snowflakes collect as they fall,
hunch there, I know, in the flurrying snow, yet now I can't see them at all.
For time slowly weakened my vision; while the patterns seem almost as clear,
some things that I saw
when I was a boy,
are lost to me now in my advancing years.
The chipmunk who seeks out his burrow and the geese in their unseen reprieve
are there as they were, and yet they are not; and though it seems childish to grieve,
who would condemn a blind man for bemoaning the vision he lost?
Well, in a small way,
through the passage of days,
I have learned some of his loss.
As a keen-eyed young lad I endeavored to see things most adults could not?
the camouflaged nests of the hoot owls, the woodpecker’s favorite haunts.
But now I no longer can find them, nor understand how I once could,
and it seems such a waste
of those far-sighted days,
to end up near blind in this wood.
Remembrance
by Michael R. Burch
Remembrance like a river rises;
the rain of recollection falls;
frail memories, like vines, entangled,
cling to Time's collapsing walls.
The past is like a distant mist,
the future like a far-off haze,
the present half-distinct an hour
before it blurs with unseen days.
Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch
Last night, while dawn was far away
and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies,
as thunder boomed and lightning railed,
I conjured words, where passion failed ...
But, oh, that you were mine tonight,
sprawled in this bed, held in these arms,
your breasts pale baubles in my hands,
our bodies bent to old demands ...
Such passions we might resurrect,
if only time and distance waned
and brought us back together; now
I pray that this might be, somehow.
But time has left us twisted, torn,
and we are more apart than miles.
How have you come to be so far—
as distant as an unseen star?
So that, while dawn is far away,
my thoughts might not return to you,
I feed your portrait to the flames,
but as they feast, I burn for you.
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