beauty is in the heart
freedom is within the mind
and peace is found
when we unbind

from our earthly attachments

reconciling, that sparse is our time
there will come a day
where youth will pass away
convictions, less in the sense of values but crime
you'll have wished you spent your earlier years
with a nose fixed to the grind
wouldn't that have been grand
in the latter part of your life
to have no worries on the mind
no cares, but for
time time time

I'm snowing in
On the east coast
Sunday afternoon to Tuesday
People who go to work
In wintertime
Know you can't get it
Any better than this.
Walking around the house
Drinking red wine
Drinking green tea
Writing poems
But I feel like
Life is an incomplete picture
Without you
You don't see us together
Because you don't want
To see us together
I can please you as much as
I can hurt you
But I always welcome
your feminine charm
To tame and absorb my roughness
You told me I should move on
While too many questions
Left unanswered
But I still feel like
Life is incomplete
without you.

When you start to feel hapless,
This feeling that you are hopeless
Just making you feel the emptiness
That chains the heart and makes you feel helpless

Don't let that feeling mislead you anymore
Just acquire what the soul is crying out for
Hi back and unite with your maker
The one the soul calls father

This is the table where we break our bread
and all of you are invited
to share the cup of bitterness.

Oh, taste and see how eternity embraces you,
how the broken shards merge together,
we become family again.

You do not ask for glory and give nothing
in return.

I stumbled across a letter from an old friend,
its contents were long and wordy but they had their end.
It was just her way of saying she appreciated our friendship.
A friendship unanchored, blew away with the wind
with paper sails that have only thinned.

Birthdays used to be a grand affair; a day to celebrate
but each year the wishes dwindle down so I reciprocate.
Radio meets silence while we're both aware of the days
until it becomes a memory of the song that no longer plays.
Too busy trying to navigate channels that changed.

Then an invitation to a graduation came to me one year
a wedge of uninterrupted distance bridged by a, "Dear."
I don't know if olive branches can hold my weighted heart
but I sent my response to expect me there
before I decided to not care.

When the day came you said, "I didn't think you would come!"
I kept quiet how I cried in my car a block from
your home. I hid my face in your arms and squeezed you tight
because the wedge between us was five-years wide.
"I said I would," is all I replied.

And we asked each other questions that friends don't ask.
What did you study? Where do you live? What do you do?
We joke around but do not laugh as hard as we used to.
My past brought to my present like a nostalgic gift.
A chance to heal over our ocean-wide rift.

And there were no known reasons! I can't turn back the clock!
I just drifted like a small boat barely tethered to its dock
until a storm came and everyone forgot to tie me down.
Or maybe it was on purpose, or maybe I couldn't secure me.
I was the fourth in a unit of three, send me out to sea.

But there is a positive to all of this turmoil
there is a reason the invitation made it to my door.
I rowed myself through the five-year waves back to shore
and tethered my boat and checked the knots times ten.
When friends become strangers we get to meet again.

Sanctuary at Dawn
by Michael R. Burch

I have walked these thirteen miles
just to stand outside your door.
The rain has dogged my footsteps
for thirteen miles, for thirty years,
through the monsoon seasons ...
and now my tears
have all been washed away.

Through thirteen miles of rain I slogged,
I stumbled and I climbed
rainslickened slopes
that led me home
to the hope that I might find
a life I lived before.

The door is wet; my cheeks are wet,
but not with rain or tears ...
as I knock I sweat
and the raining seems
the rhythm of the years.

Now you stand outlined in the doorway
—a man as large as I left—
and with bated breath
I take a step
into the accusing light.

Your eyes are grayer
than I remembered;
your hair is grayer, too.
As the red rust runs
down the dripping drains,
our voices exclaim—

"My father!"
"My son!"

NOTE: “Sanctuary at Dawn” was written either in high school or during my first two years of college. Keywords/Tags: father, son, conflict, reconciliation, storm, rain, tears, sweat, mud, slog, downpour, flood

Here I long
For apologies from
The people
Who offended me

Here I ask
For explanations from
The people
Who treated me poorly

But deep inside
I know
The one
That needs to be sorry

Hence here I am
Asking for
Forgiveness,
I am sorry