Regret (Reading)

By Michael R. Burch

Featured in New Lyre Spring 2021

Regret
By Michael R. Burch 

Regret, 
a bitter 
ache to bear . . . 

Once starlight 
languished 
in your hair . . . 

A shining there 
as brief 
as rare. 

Regret . . . 
a pain 
I chose to bear . . . 

unleash 
the torrent 
of your hair . . . 

and show me 
once again— 
how rare. 

Michael R. Burch is the editor of The HyperTexts, on-line at www.thehypertexts.com, where he has published hundreds of poets over the past three decades. His poetry has been translated into fourteen languages, taught in high schools and colleges around the globe, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers. A five-time Pushcart nominee, his poems, translations and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary journals, including The Lyric, New Lyre, Romantics Quarterly, The Chained Muse, LIGHT, Measure, Southwest Review, The Chariton Review, The Chimaera, Brief Poems, Poem Today, Asses of Parnassus, Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing and The Best of the Ecl…