I like the relation between the words
"Run" & "Reflect"
When You're in cave
You race to be perfect!

man cave versus she-sheds.

A man I know, finished his basement,
a skilled builder, he built it himself and
installed the masculine items prerequisite,
recliner and pool table, refridgerated mugs etcetera.

When asked how
he was enjoying
his privy isle
he replied, it’s ok,
but haven’t been down
there much lately,
seeing as the pool table
is used primarily
for folding laundry,
and the recliner
reserved for her
unmentionables.

he has
shed his man-cave secondarily to
she that rules,
Cardi-be-Cleopatra,
she rules, the empire,
now it’s her she-shed,
he openly cried
real manly tears
to me, fellow member
of hu-man-unkind.

one more,
just another
finished man,
a home & cave-less
bro…

Melting
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
                       so bright,
                                         so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.

Keywords/Tags: spring, melting, snow, winter, icicle, stalactite, underground, cave, transformation, love, warmth

The Gardener’s Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least . . .

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies . . .

Faint scent of roses, then—a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true?

Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call—ecstatic crew!—
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You.

NOTE: I do not believe in Jesus as a “sacrifice” to a primitive “god” who demands the blood of innocents in order to “forgive” sins of his own making through a ghoulish "atonement." But I will not completely discount the hope that love can transcend death, although, like Thomas, I will have to see it to believe it. Keywords/Tags: Jesus, Christ, cave, grave, tomb, gardener, roses, angels, resurrection, Mary, Magdalene, love, heaven

Under the still and open stars of a cousin's farm
too far to touch, I've dreamt of whiskers on catfish
since we last had tea.
The Waitomo Caves are strung by glowworms I
was too afraid to be touched by.
What if it touched my arm
and had me turn around?
If one had stuck my lip?
If I'd feel my face in blue glow light
just for a while?

I'd rest my head upon your arm
to take a memory for Facebook.
Your college crush would see herself
as phosphoric string that brushed your hair.
At night we'd drink a flower-blossomed tea
and meet again, two cave fish in a dream.