Michael R. Burch

These are poems about poetry, poems about writing, poems about the process of composition...

The Composition of Shadows (I)
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.
    
And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,...

These are longer poems and longish poems by Michael R. Burch.

These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age...

I.

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber
of these ancient halls. 

I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone,
not untouched.

The Most Popular Poems of Michael R. Burch
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch

Styx
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.

"Styx" is one of my better early poems, written in high school.

Childless
by Michael R. Burch

How can she bear her grief?
Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight
of one fallen star.