You smell like pure warmth, sweet and heady, like a muggy summer night just after a heavy rainfall; earthy. A wet cedar, woody scent with an undertone of citrus. You smell of home, a sheltered blanket of safety.

I looked out the window, goodness me
torrential rainfall in Germany

on the TV a reporter said
people are missing, many are dead

aerial views of the devastation
leave no room for the imagination

they show the extend of the flood
which left the area covered in mud

horrendous stories and detailed accounts
explain what happened and no one doubts

this is a direct result of the climate change
experts say, it's neither surprising nor very strange

It is as if a wave of tranquility passed over me this morning. Still numb. However, the strenuous longing to feel has dissipated. The wounds have be temporarily cauterized. No empty pain lingers in the darkness like a phantom menace. I felt nothing before, But I knew I was in pain. Now the nothingness consumes any lingering obscure thoughts. I am the hollow man; Such a fragile shell I carry on burden bones. But tis a pleasant day indeed. Thunder storms barrage the sky in open warfare and ominous tear drops soak the battlefield. For once I am not the fool weeping alone; The world takes my place, my pain, my suffering, and I revel in the warmth of it's tears as any good sadist does.

Thunder and rain
Dark clouds roll over the earth
Not quickly as in a storm
The heavens stand almost still
The rain not slanted but straight down
No lighting but only thunder
So much known to now be lost
Most of it for the better
For knowing all evil
Only multiplies evil
And the deep truths
Obscure the simple ones
Let the rain come
To wash us all away
That those who come after
May be better than we
Though it is not intended
Nor can ever been
Until all things pass away

I usually write when it's raining
When it's raining I'm usually right
Wrote my heart on my sleeve while complaining
When and why weave the unknown archane art
Without measure of meaning or pleasure
Above and beyond anything we thought
Outside of the encircled we're drawing
With all wonder as is fervantly caught
Bringing forward a motion of knowing
Beyond knowing mercy as serverity's stair
Reunification of all being
Exhalation from and into the aer

Dance in rainfall,
Makes me forget,
All of you.

Moments
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.

There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.

Published by Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly, Grassroots Poetry, The Chained Muse, in a Soundcloud reading by Vex Darkly, in a YouTube reading by Jasper Sole, and in a Romanian translation by Petru Dimofte. Keywords/Tags: Spring, rain, rainfall, petals, blossoms, blossoming, promise, winter, night, cold, pale, twilight, void, emptiness, abyss, dark, enchantment