Pan, Daredevil, Step Into Starlight & Other Poems

By Michael R. Burch

Featured in New Lyre Summer 2022

Pan 

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,  
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ... 

... Once there were paths that led to coracles 
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ... 

... where we cannot return, because we lost 
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ... 

... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair 
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ... 

... that led up to the Fortress in the trees 
will not support our weight, but on our knees ... 

... we still might fit inside those splendid hours 
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ... 

... of voices of the wolves’ tormented howls 
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ... 

Fascination with Light 

Death glides in on calico wings, 
a breath of a moth 
seeking a companionable light, 

where it hovers, unsure, 
sullen, shy or demure, 
in the margins of night,  

a soft blur.  

With a frantic dry rattle 
of alien wings, 
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato 

then flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.  

And yet it returns 
to the flame, its delight, 
as long as it burns. 

Completing the Pattern 

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead 
who kept life’s compact 
                                     and who thus endure 
harsh sentence here—among pink-petaled beds 
and manicured green lawns. 
                                          The sky’s azure, 
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red 
at last when sunset staggers to the door 
of each white mausoleum, to inquire— 
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness? 

Daredevil

There are days that I believe 
(and nights that I deny) 
love is not mutilation. 

Daredevil, dry your eyes.