#cranes
the songs of wings flutter in the air,
softly through the stars, begins the fear,
the loss of who
a question remains,
a destain for the most precious,
a party of cranes conversing in silence,
a life that remains unbalanced.
May 6, 2020
May 6, 2020 at 6:31 PM UTC
If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch
If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...
You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...
Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...
Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,
held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Muddy River Poetry Review. Keywords/Tags: San Miguel, vacation, summer, love, affair, cafe, cafetucho, anhingas, cranes, sea, tides, bay, moorings, green, brine
Mar 23, 2020
Mar 23, 2020 at 12:31 AM UTC
Most of us are just paper planes,
Trying to become origami cranes.
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019 at 7:23 PM UTC
This scrap piece of paper
Could have been a plane
But, instead, it's a poem by me;
Not burnt into vapour,
Folded like a crane,
Or anything else it could be.
This scrap piece of paper,
Now scrap more than ever,
Because I have added these words,
Which now start to taper,
Because I'm not clever
Enough to write of paper birds.
This scrap piece of paper
Has no more left to give
Apart from the next three forced lines;
It won't save the tapir,
Teach you how you should live,
Or help you pay old parking fines.
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 11:48 AM UTC
Dead, it’s dead.
Crafted pale, rough paper,
And it’s dead.
A new born yet immobile,
A silent structure.
Dead, but it has a head.
Slightly curved, pinched cheeks,
But it’s dead.
Wide wings yet tiny bodice,
An art carrying Alice.
Dead, and it’s red.
****** winged, folded paper,
On all feathers it bled.
Imagination has it flying,
Leaving traces of men false hoping.
Jul 11, 2018
Jul 11, 2018 at 2:48 AM UTC
The first in over sixty years
The whooping cranes are living wild
Now one young pair has laid an egg
And, too, with luck, will raise their child
They near Kissimmee were released
Beating the odds, survived to breed
A ray of hope they might increase
And ***** the armor of human greed
But cranes need water as do we
As still we pump the wetlands dry
Our chains of lakes sprout fat resorts
The river of grass condemned to die
Yet dare we dream we might reverse
This harsh inflicted damage done
Still apathy is our nation's curse
Which battles none has ever won
Today I cheer the whooping cranes
Who still have hope that they might see
Upon some far and distant day
Their offspring's offspring flying free
Oct 23, 2015
Oct 23, 2015 at 6:00 AM UTC
Like a cotton candy you're sticking on my lips,
I'm ripping you off with my teeth and melting you in my throat.
Soft, in the echoes of breaths
You are kissing my heart,
Sprinkling it with cinnamon
And wrapping it in orange peel,
You're wearing my taste on your fingertips.
I'm finding you in every blink
When I forget what you look like in the fall
Standing under the thousands of paper cranes,
Hugging my loneliness
And forgetting yours.
Sometimes, you're gliding down my back
And dropping through the skin,
Burning, soft
In echoes of breaths,
In the salt void
Of a blink .
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 4:57 AM UTC
Origami cranes
Twelve steps, forty eight pure folds
Peaceful paper cranes.
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 5:16 PM UTC
A wish unfulfilled
She'll never be reached
But we'll keep on flying
Higher and higher
Above the clouds
Beyond the horizon
Till the air turns thin
Where like blade cuts the wind
We'll keep on rising
Higher and higher
Till our hearts turn blue
Till the blue turns black
And then white: nothing
And then perhaps
We could touch her heart
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 12:53 PM UTC
I made 1000 pinwheels
instead of cranes
They were beacons And
wishes.
You lined your front yard with them.
A dizzying kaleidoscope
lighting up your porch
So I would know when
I arrived back to you,
home
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 11:44 PM UTC