Starlight and Moonlight
These are poems about starlight and moonlight, moons and stars, dreams and visions, illuminations and intimations …
Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?
And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?
And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?
Published by Starlight Archives, The Chained Muse, Writ in Water, Jenion, Famous Poets and Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Poetry Webring, TALESetc and The Word (UK)
Step Into Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child...
Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites...
Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends...
And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway...
For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!
Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and Opera News
Regret
by Michael R. Burch
Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear...
once starlight
languished
in your hair...
a shining there
as brief
as rare.
Regret...
a pain
I chose to bear...
unleash
the torrent
of your hair...
and show me
once again—
how rare.
Published by The HyperTexts and The Chained Muse
Infectious!
by Hafiz aka Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I became infected with happiness tonight
as I wandered idly, singing in the starlight.
Now I'm wonderfully contagious—
so kiss me!
Published by Better Than Starbucks and Poem Today
Bath by Moonlight
by Michael R. Burch
She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections.…
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty...
what do we know of love,
or duty?
Kindred
by Michael R. Burch
Rise, pale disastrous moon!
What is love, but a heightened effect
of time, light and distance?
Did you burn once,
before you became
so remote, so detached,
so coldly, inhumanly lustrous,
before you were able to assume
the very pallor of love itself?
What is the dawn now, to you or to me?
We are as one,
out of favor with the sun.
We would exhume
the white corpse of love
for a last dance,
and yet we will not.
We will let her be,
let her abide,
for she is nothing now,
to you
or to me.
Moon Lake
by Michael R. Burch
Starlit recorder of summer nights,
what magic spell bewitches you?
They say that all lovers love first in the dark...
Is it true?
Is it true?
Is it true?
Starry-eyed seer of all that appears
and all that has appeared—
What sights have you seen?
What dreams have you dreamed?
What rhetoric have you heard?
Is love an oration,
or is it a word?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
Have you heard?
I wrote this poem in my teens, during my "Romantic Period." It has been set to music by David Hamilton, the award-winning Australian composer who also set "Will There Be Starlight" to music.
Only Flesh
by Michael R. Burch
Moonlight in a pale silver rain caresses her cheek.
What she feels is an emptiness more chilling than fear...
Nothing is questioned, yet the answer seems clear.
Night, inevitably, only seems to end.
Flesh is the stuff that does not endure.
The sand begins its passage through narrowing glass
as Time sifts out each seed yet to come.
Only flesh does not last.
Eternally, the days rise and fall with the sun;
each bright grain, slipping past, will return.
Only flesh fades to ash though unable to burn.
Only flesh does not last.
Only flesh, in the end, makes its bed in brown grass.
Only flesh shivers, pale as the pale wintry light.
Only flesh seeps in oils that will not ignite.
Only flesh rues its past.
Only flesh.
Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch
I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps...
How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
breasts daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded...
They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover's ease idly tracing flesh...
They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the erect pen...
Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda...
Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.
Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye
Keywords/Tags: moon, full moon, star, stars, night, nightfall, dark, dream, dreams, dreaming, dream time, dream girl, love, affinity and love, bittersweet love, blind love
Published as the collection "Poems about the Moon and Stars"
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