Like standing on the peak of a mountain range during a lightning storm with my eyes closed,
I am sending myself as a beacon out to you.
With blueberry tinted fingers you touch my face, soft as the sunset mist, and leave bruise colored echoes across my skin,
I am running, skipping my body across the darkening soil like a stone, spinning my way past the orange fungi adorned trees after you,
Can’t you feel the swirling hurricane of desire in my chest when we press close,
the way my body settles like cooling lava around you when we intertwine,
I cannot help but to be shaped by you.

All around us the auroras waltz and curtsy,
the moss cloaked rocks pulsate with earth's breath,
the lightning strikes.
I open my eyes, and you are gone.

Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
casually in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . .

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have known the years to pass
almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . .

For here the valleys fill with sunlight
to the brim, then empty again,
and it seems that only I notice
how the years flood out, and in . . .

This is an early poem that made me feel like a “real poet.” I remember writing it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student. I believe that was at age 17. "Observance" was originally published by Nebo as "Reckoning." It was later published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Verses, Romantics Quarterly, the anthology There is Something in the Autumn, and Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: hills, mountains, valleys, time, seasons, years, fall, leaves, flood, cycle, horizon, brim, rim

On a moonlit night with stars from heaven,
                              
A trail to be followed with people unknown
But the worth of the efforts definitely known,
                                  
Ineffable was the sunrise view from the windy top,
Reluctance to blink an eye to not miss a moment at all,
Nothing is comparable to the mighty Mountains,

What a marvelous experience it surely was!

~ S.G.

the snow-covered mountains
glitter brighter
than stars

so when
i blink
i can still
see their beauty

In the valley of darkness, I shall not want
Though a hole resides where the heartbeat should be
The vessels still do their work

My lungs decay, black and smoked out
And my organs dry up from strong rums
And the things I hold dear become a desert storm

But I shall not ask for the help of dying trees
Whose fruit, though ripe, would leave me with less leaves
Or perhaps with more than I could bear

No, I stand on the mountains
The mountains we lived in, where the church sits upon the hill
I stand on the mountains and call for him

I call for him
and I know - without science or senses -
That he is near

Mountain top,
Riverside dreams,
Leaving behind
Places, people
As they blur through
Passing by
On a journey.