Pleading for a purchased god
Romanticized for its ancien régime
Celiac, and yet I licked the wheat paste
Of the letter I was was trimmed A4

In all that time spent by the basin
(and its traffic-trimming wetlands)
I only rode my bike to the depot
To color code my calendar

When capital kept its calls collect,
When the gravy train kept me idle
Each chamber would be emptied
Fruitlessly: punch drunk with praise

(Indulge a little)

Each from four through five: orchestrated
The plains always claim the sixth
(Respecting the tradition of western folk)
Only three will ever threaten treatment

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.

Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.

I believe I wrote the first version of this poem toward the end of my senior year of high school, around age 18 in late 1976. To my recollection this is my only poem directly influenced by the “sprung rhythm” of Dylan Thomas (moreso than that of Gerard Manley Hopkins). But I was not happy with the fourth line and put the poem aside for more than 20 years, until 1998, when I revised it. But I was still not happy with the fourth line, so I put it aside and revised it again in 2020, nearly half a century after originally writing the poem! Keywords/Tags: sprung, rhythm, myth, gorse, thistles, wheat, mown, grain, sheaf, faith, grief, golden, humble

You did not choose your father,
Neither did your father knew you;
Your birthright was only seeming,
Never yours from the beginning.

As waters separated from waters,
So sheep separated from goats.
But there is no seas in the end,
And all tares burned and wheat gathered.

cool spring water
fresh ground flour
with love and time
growing a bit sour
a spectacle divine

I dream of Wheat, and a wife in a past life.

It always plays back to me in flashes like a memory of a past life. Her ankle length Azure dress, the blue sky with so few clouds. Her pale skin and bare feet as we walk. I carry her many brass-buckled sandals as we walk, these are things that always come back to me in echos, these things always remain constant. It started when i was a little girl, maybe six or seven, I started having a series of recurring dreams. The one I tell you about now always feels like it happened before, I call it “Woman of Wheat.”

Sometimes I am a grown man, I wear leather bracers with lions or a tree, an old oak design. My hands are calloused and as I look down to step over a root I see my maroon tunic and leather breeches and buckled boots I wear also. I am tall and strong. My blades are heavy and familiar upon my back.
Sometimes I am a Grown Woman, I wear Iron rings upon my hands, and brass wrist cuffs with a chiseled vining flower design. My hands are scarred from my previous life of war, my arms are scared and I feel the pain of the fire under my brass arm cuffs even still. As I look down to step over a root I see my white knee-length dress, secured with a brass chain belt, the buckle is chiseled leather with a Lion head, a mane made of Serpents. My thin yet deadly blade bounces on my hip. Why do these things stick out to me so? I was once able to bear, but cannot any longer, yet our children are strong and beautiful.

Her face, always seems out of focus as we walk upon the worn path through the golden, harvest ready wheat stalks. They come up near out chests and waists, I run my hands over the grain as I pass. Her shoes dangle always in my right hands, my Sword hand.

Her hair falls in Ringlets down to the center of her back. The Sun lights her up, making her seems like a Seraphim or Valkyrie. It shines Golden, red and caramel in the light of day, like blood stained gold, soft as silk she sometimes lets me braid it.
Her laughter sounds like joyous chimes around us. Sometimes, their laughter, the laughter of our children joins in, as they rush through the wheat just out of sight. I catch glimpses of them as they run past me, they are so beautiful and fill me with love. My sons and daughter, our three children, my little lion cubs.

When she turns back to me, she doesn’t say anything, just smiles an joyous smile upon her crimson painted lips, and her laugh twinkles through the air like soothing chimes in the air once more. Her eyes I cannot remember the shape, but I will always remember the color; A clear emerald, seafoam green. It is these eyes I fell in love with when I first looked upon her, and do so every time. Her soul shines like a lighthouse, to a sailor lost in a hurricane through them to me.
It is so peaceful as we walk, just walk though the wheat on a clear day as a cooling breeze shuffles the land. I don’t know how long the five or so of us walk through the fields, just walking through our harvest with a purpose to be somewhere, but us in no hurry to get anywhere. Only laughter from her and the children ringing around me, and I chuckle at their antics.

It feels as though I had waited lifetimes to have this sort of peace after all I feel I have done.
When I wake I am always happy but a little sad. I never know the shape of her or my children’s faces. I only know their eyes and hair and laughter. I have never known them in this lifetime, in this reality. But I miss them as though I did.


Written: Monday Febuary 20th 2017

The past
It's always on my mind
The grassy backyard I grew up in
This and that-memories of
Halloween, rabbits, fall, you.
All the things that pass in time.
I pick up this notion that
One may recall what happened to
Them when they were a young kid.
The balloons touching the ceiling of
My pre-school, the quiet time when
We supposedly slept but never did.
Like the color yellow, how I loved it,
The '89 earthquake, being shocked by it.
Songs in Kindergarten. Art, pictures, music.
Summer camp, exploring the wild, love, light,
And wind. I remember my brother
And I playing tag as the sun went
Down in the first house I moved in.
Running along the fields in the day,
Swimming, or memories of the
Tumbleweeds performance,
Being In the play.
All of the times I would always
Watch the sun on the swing as it rose
In the morning. I remember the vast
Wheat fields, a sense of calm quiet,
As if there were no place more peaceful.
Climbing my favorite pine tree in my back yard.
But one thing I remember more than ever
Was being on a field of my own.
The sky is filled with clouds always
Floating off like they
Were from an endless world of tranquility,
This warm sun, this was and-I forever remember
It to be-my one true home.

But that is another story...