birdsong melodies
gentle wind caressing leaves
~ pleasing perfect pitch




© 2020 Mark Toney.  All rights reserved.

dear god, you humble me into quietude

she says it’s sunny and 75
nearing 3’o’clock, cooling,
let’s go for our usual constitutional,
for a lovely afternoon walk to Shell Beach

can’t can’t can’t walking now in
a bottomless pit, every handhold,
poems, newly commissioned, newborn,
broken off the wall, revealing a gleaming,
light of iron pyrite, really good fool’s gold,
cause only fools write good poetry, or even try

but tonight I’m gonna feed you bucatini bolognese
babe, you gotta walk, make some room for all the words
that will come tumbling free falling while I’m sleeping next,
you’re up prowling looking for rhymes, lines, unheard of before,
you’ll need energy to bite, write, and make loving poetry and then,
then, sleep late, my laddie-baddie, new ones on my nightstand,
for my perusal, my usual unusual man who gifts me them to
in quantities of ‘more galore,’ that I accept, adore...adore

so afterwards, I must say my morning prayer, as an atheist forgiven,
the one I commissioned, and you composed, for me:

Dear God: you humble me into quietude, with gratitude...

The Peripheries of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Through waning afternoons we glide
the watery peripheries of love.
A silence, a quietude falls.

Above us—the darkening pavilions of clouds.
Below us—rough pebbles slowly worn smooth
grate in the gentle turbulence
of yesterday’s forgotten rains.

Later, the moon like a ******
lifts her stricken white face
and the waters rise
toward some unfathomable shore.

We sway gently in the wake
of what stirs beneath us,
yet leaves us unmoved ...
curiously motionless,

as though twilight might blur
the effects of proximity and distance,
as though love might be near—

as near
as a single cupped tear of resilient dew
or a long-awaited face.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Magazine, Boston Poetry Magazine, Triplopia, Shadows Ink, E Mobius Pi, Underground Poets, Emotions Literary Magazine, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, Poetically Speaking, The Poetic Muse, Poet’s Haven, Poetic Voices, Nutty Stories (South Africa) and Gostinaya (in a Russian translation by Yelena Dubrovin)

Keywords/Tags: Love, face, recognition, water, silence, quietude, quiet, turbulence, clouds, pavilions, moon, white, pale, stricken, ******, water, wake

consciously, willfully, I wish it

quietly the Sunday, the sun day, drifts toward,
in its natural game, set, overmatched,
the foregone conclusion, nightfall diminishment

the water songfully swishes,
as the tide departs for places unknown, this then, now
the only natural authorized aural apparition,
the power boats renounce their normal noisy conditioning,
honoring their silenced, under-sail brethren,
as well as admitting their noises disfigure
the fast approaching majesty of the end of
our summer seasoning of humanity

consciously, willfully, I wish it

once again, lush is the quietude,^
now given up, surrendered and surceased to wonder,
how come I to write of these moments so oft,
thenever-ending quest to re-inscribe it on my sensibilities,
in vainglorious hopes that this stamping will last, be the last,
see me through the turgid frigidity of my Lucifer life,
come the fall, the winter, the early dark,
the daylight's brevity, the hurricane season of the mind,
that...need I say more?

consciously, willfully, I wish it

the particular white cloud formation of the moment at hand,
shall stay in place,  be the capstone of my summer living vision,
become permanent part and parcel
of the sclera, the white of my eyes, and when
I will write, soon enough,
my vision white weeping clouded,
you will weep knowingly, sympathetically

consciously, willfully,
I wish for that as well*

8/27/17
6:35pm

I didn't read the news today
I just didn't care what it had to say
I rolled it up and put it away
I'm gonna keep the peace
I've got no reason to cry
I'm not gonna look for a reason why
Let the whole world pass me by
Cause I'm gonna keep the peace

There's enough to fear and dread
Without shoving more **** in your head
So, write it off and go back to bed
There'll be enough time to stress when we're dead.

The days are long and life is short
Facts are things that they all distort
Just gimme sports and the weather report
And I'm gonna keep the peace.
I hope you'll pardon my dismissive tone
As I turn off the TV and silence my phone
But all the ******* can leave me alone
Cause I'm gonna keep the peace

How slow the swan glides
down the darkening river
twisting its sleek, slithering neck
away from the sunshine-
saying nothing.
In the morning
only ducks drive through the water
only voles snake along the banks.

how alike

are oak leaves trembling in a soft wind

and sea foam gliding up

a million grains of sand-glass

as if all of nature is sighing into my neck, saying

“hush”

You sat next to me in quietude
But your heartbeats called me deafeningly
Reluctant to hear your voice rupture
While I waited for my name to echo stoically  

You sat next to me in quietude  
But you fought the guilt inside you solely
Tackled it with a valiant front  
As I watched you succumb inside me spiritually  

You sat next to me in quietude
Acknowledging we love semovedly
You succumbed harder in your world
And I succumbed in return silently