Love's Unfoldings Poem by Michael Burch

Love's Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch

Time unfolds...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close...
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
... a virgin yields herself, but no one knows.

Now time goes on...
I have not seen you.
... within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged...
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
... a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.

Seasons flow...
A dream is dying.
... within parched clusters, life is taking form...
You were honest;
I was angry.
... petals fling themselves before the storm.

Time is slowing...
I am older.
... blossoms wither, closing one last time...
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
... a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.

Time contracts...
I cannot touch you.
... a solitary flower cries for warmth...
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
... the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.

Keywords/Tags: spring, love, youth, pain, teen, flowers, rose, roses, petals, unfolding, virgin, virginity, dreams, lips, date, time, seasons, storms, summer, drought



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.

Keywords/Tags: contrast, emptiness, chaos, despair, darkness, night, silence, twilight, madness, contrary, contrariness



Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

I see his eyes caress my daughter's breasts
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe...

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers...

and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again—hard, staring, and silent—
though long-ago forgotten...

And I remember conjectures of panty lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares...

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard—
with a long, ineffectual stare

that years from now, he may suddenly remember.



Sappho's Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

Hushed yet melodic, the hills and the valleys
sleep unaware of the nightingale's call
while the pale calla lilies lie
listening,
glistening...
this is their night, the first night of fall.

Son, tonight, a woman awaits you;
she is more vibrant, more lovely than spring.
She'll meet you in moonlight,
soft and warm,
all alone...
then you'll know why the nightingale sings.

Just yesterday the stars were afire;
then how desire flashed through my veins!
But now I am older;
night has come,
I'm alone...
for you I will sing as the nightingale sings.

The calla lily symbolizes beauty, purity, innocence, faithfulness and true devotion. According to Greek mythology, when the Milky Way was formed by the goddess Hera's breast milk, the drops that fell to earth became calla lilies.



l/bust
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god's creation
then spoke for the Beast:

he called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne'er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
'the hoar jezebel.'

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, 'yay, aye-men! '...

together we learned why Religion is hell.