Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.
A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.
In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep . . .
Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.
Published by The Lyric, Grassroots Poetry, Romantics Quarterly, Angle, Poetry Porch, Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: Kevin Roberts, Kevin N. Roberts, Kevin Nicholas Roberts, Romantic, Poet, Romanticism, safe, harbor, night, dreams, imagination
These are poems I wrote for my friend Kevin Nicholas Roberts, who in addition to being a talented Romantic poet, was the founder and first editor of Romantics Quarterly.
Ophelia
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
Ophelia, madness suits you well,
as the ocean sounds in an empty shell,
as the moon shines brightest in a starless sky,
as suns supernova before they die ...
Goddess
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin N. Roberts
“What will you conceive in me?”—
I asked her. But she
only smiled.
“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled . . .
naked, and gladly.”
“What will become of me?”—
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.
Centuries later, I understand:
she whispered—“I Am.”
Published by Romantics Quarterly (the first poem in the first issue), Penny Dreadful, Unlikely Stories, Underground Poets, Poetically Speaking, Poetry Life & Times, Little Brown Poetry. Keywords: Muse, Goddess, Erato, Beloved, poetic, inspiration, lyric, poetry, divinity, Orpheus, Sappho
Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.
A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.
In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep . . .
Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.
Published by The Lyric, Grassroots Poetry, Romantics Quarterly, Angle, Poetry Porch, Poetry Life & Times
This poem is a commentary on writing romantic poetry in the 21st century (“a century late to be melancholy”) and the term “safe harbor” is primarily ironic. The shrimp boat, though it seems “festive,” actually represents the unnatural “industry” of modern technical” poetry. By “technical,” I mean poetry that is more of an academic enterprise than an affair of the heart. The “creatures of night” shine with a natural luminescence, like the poet’s dreams and words.
Talent
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
I liked the first passage
of her poem—where it led
(though not nearly enough
to retract what I said.)
Now the book propped up here
flutters, scarcely half read.
It will keep.
Before sleep,
let me read yours instead.
There's something of love
in the rhythms of night
—in the throb of streets
where the late workers drone,
in the sounds that attend
each day’s sad, squalid end—
that reminds us: till death
we are never alone.
So we write from the hearts
that will fail us anon,
words in red
truly bled
though they cannot reveal
whence they came,
who they're for.
And the tap at the door
goes unanswered. We write,
for there is nothing more
than a verse,
than a song,
than this chant of the blessed:
If these words
be my sins,
let me die unconfessed!
Unconfessed, unrepentant;
I rescind all my vows!
Write till sleep:
it’s the leap
only Talent allows.
Too Gentle, Angelic
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
Too gentle, angelic for Nature, child,
too pure of heart for Religion’s vice . . .
Oh, charm us again, let us be beguiled!
With your passionate warmth melt men’s hearts of ice.
This poem was written shortly after the death of the poet Kevin N. Roberts. He died on December 10, 2008 and the poem was written on December 23, 2008, just before Christmas.
Beloved
by Michael R. Burch
a prayer-poem for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
O, let me be the Beloved
and let the Longing be Yours;
but if You should “love” without Force,
how then shall I love—stone, unmoved?
But let me be the Beloved,
and let the Longing be Yours.
And as for the Saint, my dear friend,
tonight let his suffering end!,
and let him be your Beloved . . .
no longer be stone: Love unmoved!
But light on him now—Love, descend!
Tonight, let his suffering end.
For how can true Love be unmoved?
If he suffers for love, Love reproved,
I will never be your Beloved,
so love him instead, so behooved!
Yes, let him be your Beloved,
or let You be nothing, so proved.
Must this be our one and sole pact—
keep you ***** forever intact?
I wrote this poem a few months before Kevin’s death.
Nightfall
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
Only the long dolor of dusk delights me now,
as I await death.
The rain has ruined the unborn corn,
and the wasting breath
of autumn has cruelly, savagely shorn
each ear of its radiant health.
As the golden sun dims, so the dying land seems to relinquish its vanishing wealth.
Only a few erratic, trembling stalks still continue to stand,
half upright,
and even these the winds have continually robbed of their once-plentiful,
golden birthright.
I think of you and I sigh, forlorn, on edge
with the rapidly encroaching night.
Ten thousand stillborn lilies lie limp, mixed with roses, unable to ignite.
Whatever became of the magical kernel, golden within
at the winter solstice?
What of its promised kingdom, Amen!, meant to rise again
from this balmless poultice,
this strange bottomland where one Scarecrow commands
dark legions of ravens and mice?
And what of the Giant whose bellows demand our negligible lives, his black vice?
I find one bright grain here aglitter with rain, full of promise and purpose
and drive.
Through lightning and hail and nightfalls and pale, cold sunless moons
it will strive
to rise up from its “place” on a network of lace, to the glory
of being alive.
Why does it bother, I wonder, my brother? O, am I unwise to believe?
But Jack had his beanstalk
and you had your poems
and the sun seems intent to ascend
and so I also must climb
to the end of my time,
however the story
may unwind
and
end.
This poem was written around a month after Kevin’s death.
Storied Lovers
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin and Janice Roberts
In your quest for the Beloved,
my brother, did you make
a near-fatal mistake?
Did you trust in the Enchantress,
La Belle Dame, as they say,
Sans Merci? Shall I pray
more kindly hands to gather you
to warmer *******, and hold
your Spirit there, enfold
your heart in love’s sweet blessedness?
No need! One Angel’s fond caress
was your sweet haven here.
None ever held more dear,
you harbored with your Anchoress
whenever storms drew near.
Whatever storms drew near,
however great the Flood,
she held you, kind and good,
no imperious savage Empress,
but as earthly Angels should.
In your quest for the Beloved
did the road take some strange fork
where ecstatic feys cavort
that led you to her hermitage
and her hearth, safe from that wood.
(Did La Belle Dame’s dark eyes hood?)
I am thankful for the marriage
two tender spirits shared.
When the raging waters glared
and the deadly bugles blared
like cruel Trumps of Doom, below
how strong death’s undertow!
But true spirits never sink.
Though he swam through hell’s fell stink
and a sea of putrid harms,
he swam back to your arms!
*
Life lived upon the brink
of death, man’s human fate,
can yet such Love create
that the hosts above, spellbound,
fall silent. So confound
the heavens with your Love
and fly, O tender Dove!,
to wherever hearts may rest
once having sweetly blessed
a heart like my dear brother’s
and be both storied lovers.
Amen
I wrote this poem on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2009.
You Were the One Who Talked to Angels
by Michael R. Burch
for Kevin Nicholas Roberts
You were the one who talked to Angels
while I was the one who berated God,
calling him Tyrant, Infidel, Fool,
Killer, Clown, Brute, Sod, Despot, Clod.
But you were the one who talked to Angels—
who, bathed in celestial light,
stood unarmed, except for your pen
and your journal, ecstatic, to write.
How kind their baptisms, how gentle their voices!
Considering their nature the world rejoices,
and you were their gentle, their chosen one . . .
you, my kind friend, now unkindly gone.
But you were the one who talked to Angels,
in empathy, being their kind,
a child of compassion whose tender heart
burst beneath skin’s ruptured rind.
You sought the Beloved with a questing Heart;
once found, the heav’n-quickened Spirit must fly!
You mastered Man’s strange, fatalistic Art—
to live, to love, to laugh, then die.
But living here, Angel, you found the arms
of a human Angel and, living, you knew
the glories of temporal, mortal love
where one and one eclipses two.
And now she mourns you, as we all do.
But you were the one who talked to Angels,
as William Blake did, in his day,
and, childlike, felt their eclectic grace—
sweet warmth, illuminating clay.
Two kinds of Warmth—a Wife’s, and Theirs.
Two kinds of Love—Human, Divine.
Two kinds of Grace—the Angels’, Hers.
Two Planes within one Heart combine.
And so you brought far heaven near,
and so you elevated earth
and Human Love, to where the Cloud
of Witnesses might see man’s worth.
*
My Christlike brother, who talked to Angels,
where do you soar today, I wonder?
Do you fly on white percussive wings,
far, far beyond earth’s abyssal thunder,
and looking back, regard the earth
and its lightnings and their bellowed hymns
as the sparks and groans of a temporal Forge,
as merely momentary things?
There, looking up, do you see the Host
of those who ascended, of those who see
all things more clearly, having slipped
thin veils of flesh, for Eternity?
And will you, in your Joy, forget
the sufferings of serfs below,
or will you remember, cry “Relent!”
to those with the power to bestow
the gifts of spirit upon the many
rather than just the Chosen Few,
who sell bottled grace for a pretty penny
and break the hearts of doves like you?
Or will you be the Advocate
of those who live—the ***; the *****;
the homeless man; the indigent;
the waif who begs at the kirk’s barred door
and dares not enter, for her “sins”
which the rich-robed mannequins deplore
as they circle her and mind the store?
Will mercy, pity, peace conspire
to hold you in their gravity
so that, still Human, you aspire
to change earth’s dark trajectory?
I wrote this poem the day after Kevin died.
Keywords/Tags: poetry, poems, poet, Kevin Roberts, Kevin N. Roberts, Kevin Nicholas Roberts, romantic, Romantics Quarterly
