Mar 2021
Poems about the Moon and Stars
These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …
Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?
And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?
And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?
Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)
Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...
Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...
Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...
And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...
For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!
Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News
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.
Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse
Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!
Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today
Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch
She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...
what do we know of love,
or duty?
Kindred
by Michael R. Burch
Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?
Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,
so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?
What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.
We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,
and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,
for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.
Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch
Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?
Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?
Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.
Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch
Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...
Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.
The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.
Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.
Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.
Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch
I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...
How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...
They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...
They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen...
Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...
Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.
Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye
Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch
The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue—
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.
The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise—
adagio, the music she now hears,
while we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars' bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.
And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.
Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch
for my mother, Christine Ena Burch
The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.
That blazing light might be a star...
or maybe the Final Comet.
But two things are sure: your mother's love
and your puppy's kisses, doggonit!
Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch
You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...
And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...
And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.
Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?
And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka... if I wished
upon a frozen star... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm...
yet something still not love... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove...
How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.
Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.
The Watch
by Michael R. Burch
Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.
I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.
Originally published by The Lyric
A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe's.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace's or Mesopotamia's.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool's gold.
In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.
The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch
Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.
Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.
Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch
Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance...
Quiescent unions... thoughts of bliss, of hope...
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars...
like childhood's long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions... slip and bra...
Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.
Listen
by Michael R. Burch
Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.
Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.
Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon's illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.
But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.
Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.
Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love
Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"
These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …
Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?
And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?
And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?
Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)
Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...
Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...
Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...
And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...
For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!
Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News
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.
Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse
Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!
Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today
Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch
She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...
what do we know of love,
or duty?
Kindred
by Michael R. Burch
Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?
Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,
so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?
What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.
We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,
and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,
for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.
Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch
Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?
Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?
Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.
Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch
Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...
Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.
The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.
Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.
Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.
Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch
I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...
How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...
They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...
They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen...
Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...
Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.
Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye
Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch
The moon exposes syphilitic craters
and veiled by ghostly willows, palely looms,
while we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew us to the window, to the moonlight,
when all the earth was steeped in cobalt blue—
an eerie vase of achromatic flowers
bled silver by pale starlight, losing hue.
The night begins her waltz to waiting sunrise—
adagio, the music she now hears,
while we who in the sunlight slave for succor,
dreaming, seek communion with the spheres.
And all around the night is in crescendo,
and everywhere the stars' bright legions form,
and here we hear the sweet incriminations
of lovers we had once to keep us warm.
And also here we find, like bled carnations,
red lips that whitened, kisses drawn to lies,
that touched us once with fierce incantations
and taught us love was prettier than wise.
Deliver Us...
by Michael R. Burch
for my mother, Christine Ena Burch
The night is dark and scary—
under your bed, or upon it.
That blazing light might be a star...
or maybe the Final Comet.
But two things are sure: your mother's love
and your puppy's kisses, doggonit!
Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch
You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...
And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...
And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.
Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
****** deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?
And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness... or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka... if I wished
upon a frozen star... that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm...
yet something still not love... if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove...
How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.
Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review. I believe this was my first attempt at blank verse.
The Watch
by Michael R. Burch
Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.
I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.
Originally published by The Lyric
A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe's.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace's or Mesopotamia's.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool's gold.
In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man's the same
and every god's as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there's no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.
The Pictish Faeries
by Michael R. Burch
Smaller and darker
than their closest kin,
the faeries learned only too well
never to dwell
close to the villages of larger men.
Only to dance in the starlight
when the moon was full
and men were afraid.
Only to worship in the farthest glade,
ever heeding the raven and the gull.
Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch
Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance...
Quiescent unions... thoughts of bliss, of hope...
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars...
like childhood's long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions... slip and bra...
Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.
Listen
by Michael R. Burch
Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.
Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.
Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon's illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.
But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.
Published by Penny Dreadful, The HyperTexts, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England). I believe I wrote the first version of "Listen" around age 17.
Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, sky, nightfall, tonight, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love
Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"
