Dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth and Laura, and all good mothers

Bring your peculiar strength
to the strange nightmarish fray:
wrap up your cherished ones
in the golden light of day.

                                  Amen

Originally published by The Lyric

Keywords/Tags: Motherhood, good mothers, maternal, nurturing, caring, strength, courage, love, compassion, tenderness, human angels, golden light

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you came to me in my black torment
and kissed me fiercely, blazing like the sun
upon parched desert dunes, till in dawn’s foment
they melt, I am undone.

Because I am undone, you have remade me
as suns bring life, as brilliant rains endow
the earth below with leaves, where you now shade me
and bower me, somehow.

Keywords/Tags: Love, compassion, tenderness, kisses, melt, melting, sun, rain, bower, shelter, comfort, refuge, home, union

Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?

Time taught you tenderness—time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?—insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask—

what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?

Keywords/Tags: Gaza, mothers, touch, tenderness, dove, shelter, wing, coos, sings, babies, fledglings, love, god

pressed up against your face
sun streaming in through the curtains
light caressing your cheeks
my arm hurts in this position
but i'll keep it still
if it means getting to be next to you

Tenderness
is lost after a heart is ****** dry of all it has and is
This
translates to the lack of passion in your voice
(when you say my name)
I can hear the blood being pumped thoughout your body
Your apathy echoes
It projects onto me like a spotlight
I mistake this light for love
For both glisten and reveal
Your face

When I hold you in my arms what do I feel?
Something I cannot express with words.
It is tenderness that warms my heart.
When I’m injured, your warm phrases heal
Every wound that tortures me and hurts,
Every pain that tears my chest apart.
It is happiness that I do not know how
Makes me fly up high and touch the sky,
Makes me smile when I wake up at dawn.
Everything around gets bright somehow,
And I’m sure this feeling will not die.
What’s inside my heart cannot be gone.
It is peace that everybody needs,
Even those who like to live at strife,
Those who very often draw a sword.
And you show me with your words and deeds
That you wholeheartedly want your life
And my life to be in full accord.
It is passion that inflames my flesh,
And sometimes its fire is so strong
That its tongues can even scorch my bones.
Such a heat is able to enmesh
All my heart and body for so long,
That by touching I can melt the stones.
It is love, a gift sent from a star.
And this feeling is so great and pure,
It enslaves our souls and makes them free.
And in love with me you also are,
That is why I am completely sure
That together we are meant to be.

i want to hold your hand
without having to extend my own

i want to kiss you
without you knowing that i want to

i want you to know that i love you
without having to say it

I give my fear so it is held, and held, softy and weightless.
You hold it gently.
You hold me so gently.

There she lay
figure just beyond the rising turquoise spray
spooning sugar right out the jar.
******* her fingers like a babe, woe be to her, far.
Much akin to the salt in the pools by her bay
only so better loved upon the tongue.
So loved better, so tender and young.
There she was - pale feet to sand
in an even fainter dress, lace to be flung.
Sugar, between the creases of my hand,
press her closer
flavor, the monotony of man.
Curls, red, like hills of strawberry blush
lips wide to such wolfish song.
Sweet fingers, mine to touch,
from still night to golden dawn.
And constellations, in her eyes, between her bones,
upon her nose,
sprinkling her thighs.
Anew with confiture was I, filled with her breath
to lose her would be cruelty, to lose her would be death.
Why - do I love her more than what I know to be?
I'm sorry I could only write of heaven,
and not of what she sees.