Dark Valentines
These are poems about the darker side of love: not all bad, but not a bed of roses either...
The Divide
by Michael R. Burch
The sea was not salt the first tide …
was man born to sorrow that first day
with the moon—a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied—
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?
The sea was not salt the first tide …
but grew bitter, bitter—man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing—forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.
The sea was not salt the first tide …
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.
The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide …
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.
Almost Sacred
by Michael R. Burch
There were nights I held most sacred:
dark nights when we undressed
and my fingers’ rigid contours
probed your yielding curves and clefts.
There were nights I held most sacred:
when my violent, urgent thrusts
were swathed in your damp warmth
till I erupted, in my lust.
There were nights I held most sacred:
when true faith seemed almost nigh,
when this atheist praised the LORD …
until he let you die.
After the Deluge
by Michael R. Burch
She was kinder than light
to an up-reaching flower
and sweeter than rain
to the bees in their bower
where anemones blush
at the affections they shower,
and love’s shocking power.
She shocked me to life,
but soon left me to wither.
I was listless without her,
nor could I be with her.
I fell under the spell
of her absence’s power.
in that calamitous hour.
Like blithe showers that fled
repealing spring’s sweetness;
like suns’ warming rays sped
away, with such fleetness …
she has taken my heart—
alas, our completeness!
I now wilt in pale beams
of her occult remembrance.
Haunted
by Michael R. Burch
Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.
Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.
Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.
Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.
Published by Romantics Quarterly
The Composition of Shadows
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,
sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze
that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.
The Composition of Shadows (II)
by Michael R. Burch
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,
the blood’s debate
within the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass
against bright glass,
within the white Labyrinthian maze.
Through simple grace,
I touch your face,
ah words! And I would gaze
the night’s dark length
in waning strength
to find the words to feel
such light again.
O, for a pen
to spell love so ethereal.
Sex Hex
by Michael R. Burch
Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).
honeybee
by Michael R. Burch
love was a little treble thing—
prone to sing
and (sometimes) to sting
Kin
by Michael R. Burch
O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty …
what do we know of love,
or duty?
In this Ordinary Swoon
by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.
Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch
Desire glides in on calico wings,
a breath of a moth
seeking a companionable light,
where it hovers, unsure,
sullen, shy or demure,
in the margins of night,
a soft blur.
With a frantic dry rattle
of alien wings,
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato
and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.
And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.
Incompatibles
by Michael R. Burch
Reason’s
treason!
cries the Heart.
Love’s
insane,
replies the Brain.
Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch
This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh
You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl (age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart. It marveled at your power
but would not mend. And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep. Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.
“Aflutter” is a poem about a couple committing suicide together. The “eerie pact” refers to a Bible verse about the rainbow being a “covenant,” when the only covenant human beings can depend on is the original one that condemned us to suffer and die. That covenant is always kept perfectly.
Infinity
by Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your heart sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity … windswept and blue.
“Infinity” is one of the first poems that made me feel like a "real" poet. I remember reading the poem and asking myself, "Did I really write that?" Many years later, I'm still glad that I wrote it, and it still makes me feel like a real poet! I wrote it around age 18, while still in high school. “Infinity” is a poem about having sympathy for someone contemplating suicide.
Insurrection
by Michael R. Burch
She has become as the night—listening
for rumors of dawn—while the dew, glistening,
reminds me of her, and the wind, whistling,
lashes my cheeks with its soft chastening.
She has become as the lights—flickering
in the distance—till memories old and troubling
rise up again and demand remembering…
like peasants rebelling against a mad king.
Distances
by Michael R. Burch
Moonbeams on water —
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night…
So your memories are.
Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter…
So near, yet so far.
Medusa
by Michael R. Burch
Friends, beware
of her iniquitous hair—
long, ravenblack & melancholy.
Many suitors drowned there—
lost, unaware
of the length & extent of their folly.
Originally published by Grand Little Things
Adrift
by Michael R. Burch
I helplessly loved you
although I was lost
in the veils of your eyes,
grown blind to the cost
of my ignorant folly
—your unreadable rune—
as leashed tides obey
an indecipherable moon.
Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch
There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise …
and then … annihilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were nights our hearts conceived
untruths reborn as sighs.
To dream was our consolation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations …
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Daredevilry
by Michael R. Burch
Trees
full of possibilities
whisper of ancient mysteries—
mysteries of birth, of life and death.
Each leaf—illuminated, light as breath—
gives up clinging to the old verities,
embraces its frailties,
skydives …
Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star …
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes—the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air—
too thin to grasp, to breathe. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure …
two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether …
now separate, now distant, now together.
Originally published by Sonnet Scroll
Violets
by Michael R. Burch
Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to an indiscreet height
and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:
suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed
and as you braided your hair
into long bluish plaits
the shadows empurpled,
the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air,
we watched the sun’s long glide
into evening,
knowing and unknowing.
O, how the illusions of love
await us in the commonplace
and rare
then haunt our small remainder of hours.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly
Redolence
by Michael R. Burch
Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.
Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.
And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet.
Published by The Eclectic Muse and The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003
Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch
May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leaves us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but its thorn.
Originally published by The Lyric
She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful
by Michael R. Burch
She was very strange, and beautiful,
like a violet mist enshrouding hills
before night falls
when the hoot owl calls
and the cricket trills
and the envapored moon hangs low and full.
She was very strange, in a pleasant way,
as the hummingbird
flies madly still,
so I drank my fill
of her every word.
What she knew of love, she demurred to say.
She was meant to leave, as the wind must blow,
as the sun must set,
as the rain must fall.
Though she gave her all,
I had nothing left …
yet I smiled, bereft, in her receding glow.
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
Isolde's Song
by Michael R. Burch
Through our long years of dreaming to be one
we grew toward an enigmatic light
that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?
We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite
the lack of all sensation—all but one:
we felt the night's deep chill, the air so bright
at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.
To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.
We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt
spring's urgency, midsummer's heat, fall's lash,
wild winter's ice and thaw and fervent melt.
We felt returning light and could not ask
its meaning, or if something was withheld
more glorious. To touch seemed life's great task.
At last the petal of me learned: unfold.
And you were there, surrounding me. We touched.
The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,
and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
For All that I Remembered
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved …
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could …
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
Originally published by The Raintown Review
Second Sight
by Michael R. Burch
I never touched you—
that was my mistake.
Deep within,
I still feel the ache.
Can an unformed thing
eternally break?
Now, from a great distance,
I see you again
not as you are now,
but as you were then—
eternally present
and Sovereign.
A Surfeit of Light
by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.
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.
This Distance Between Us
by Michael R. Burch
This distance between us,
this vast gulf of remembrance
void of understanding,
sets us apart.
You are so far,
lost child,
weeping for consolation,
so dear to my heart.
Once near to my heart,
though seldom to touch,
now you are foreign,
now you grow faint …
like the wayward light of a vagabond star—
obscure, enigmatic.
Is the reveling gypsy
becoming a saint?
Now loneliness,
a broad expanse
—barren, forbidding—
whispers my name.
I, too, am a traveler
down this dark path,
unsure of the footing,
cursing the rain.
I, too, have felt pain,
pain and the ache of passion unfulfilled,
remorse, grief, and all the terrors
of the night.
And how very black
and how bleak my despair …
O, where are you, where are you
shining tonight?
The Toast
by Michael R. Burch
For longings warmed by tepid suns
(brief lusts that animated clay),
for passions wilted at the bud
and skies grown desolate and gray,
for stars that fell from tinseled heights
and mountains bleak and scarred and lone,
for seas reflecting distant suns
and weeds that thrive where seeds were sown,
for waltzes ending in a hush,
for rhymes that fade as pages close,
for flames' exhausted, drifting ash,
and petals falling from the rose, …
I raise my cup before I drink,
saluting ghosts of loves long dead,
and silently propose a toast—
to joys set free, and those I fled.
Floating
by Michael R. Burch
Memories flood the sand’s unfolding scroll;
they pour in with the long, cursive tides of night.
Memories of revenant blue eyes and wild lips
moist and frantic against my own.
Memories of ghostly white limbs …
of soft sighs
heard once again in the surf’s strangled moans.
We meet in the scarred, fissured caves of old dreams,
green waves of algae billowing about you,
becoming your hair.
Suspended there,
where pale sunset discolors the sea,
I see all that you are
and all that you have become to me.
Your love is a sea,
and I am its trawler—
harbored in dreams,
I ride out night’s storms.
Unanchored, I drift through the hours before morning,
dreaming the solace of your warm breasts,
pondering your riddles, savoring the feel
of the explosions of your hot, saline breath.
And I rise sometimes
from the tropical darkness
to gaze once again out over the sea …
You watch in the moonlight
that brushes the water;
bright waves throw back your reflection at me.
This is one of my more surreal poems, as the sea and lover become one. I believe I wrote this one at age 19. It has been published by Penny Dreadful, Romantics Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine and Poetry Life & Times. The poem may have had a different title when it was originally published, but it escapes me … ah, yes, "Entanglements."
To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
US Verse, after Auden
by Michael R. Burch
“Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”
Verse has small value in our Unisphere,
nor is it fit for windy revelation.
It cannot legislate less taxing fears;
it cannot make us, several, a nation.
Enumerator of our sins and dreams,
it pens its cryptic numbers, and it sings,
a little quaintly, of the ways of love.
(It seems of little use for lesser things.)
NOTE: The Unisphere mentioned is a large stainless steel representation of the earth; it was commissioned to celebrate the beginning of the space age for the 1964 New York World's Fair.
Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch
Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.
Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.
Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.
Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.
Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.
Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.
Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require
the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.
Myth
by Michael R. Burch
Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.
And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and sighing, complete,
waiting, lain in a low sheaf—
full of faith, full of grief.
Here the immaculate dawn
requires belief of the leafed earth
and she is the myth of the mown grain—
golden and humble in all its weary worth.
Desdemona
by Michael R. Burch
Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.
Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and—spent of flame—
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.
You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies—
imprisonment your sense denies.
You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None—winsome, bright or rare—
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.
But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew—
each moonless night the nettles grew
and strangled hope, where love dies too.
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 believe I wrote this poem in my late teens, during my "Romantic Period."
Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch
Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance …
Quiescent unions … thoughts of bliss, of hope …
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars …
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions … slip and bra …
Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.
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!
I believe I wrote the original version of this poem in my early twenties.
Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch
for Vicki
Time unfolds …
Your lips were roses.
… petals open, shyly clustering …
I had dreams
of other seasons.
… ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.
Night and day …
Dreams burned within me.
… flowers part themselves, and then they close …
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
… a virgin yields herself, but no one knows.
Now time goes on …
I have not seen you.
… within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged …
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
… a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.
Seasons flow …
A dream is dying.
… within parched clusters, life is taking form …
You were honest;
I was angry.
… petals fling themselves before the storm.
Time is slowing …
I am older.
… blossoms wither, closing one last time …
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
… a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.
Time contracts …
I cannot touch you.
… a solitary flower cries for warmth …
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
… the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.
Vacuum
by Michael R. Burch
Over hushed quadrants
forever landlocked in snow,
time’s senseless winds blow …
leaving odd relics of lives half-revealed,
if still mostly concealed …
such are the things we are unable to know
that once intrigued us so.
Come then, let us quickly repent
of whatever truths we’d once determined to learn:
for whatever is left, we are unable to discern.
There’s nothing left of us; it’s time to go.
Smoke
by Michael R. Burch
The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in) my mind, and I can't say
if what we had was good or bad, or where it is today.
The endless days of summer's haze I still recall today;
she spoke and smoky skies stood still as summer slipped away …
This poem appeared in my high school journal, the Lantern, in 1976. It also appeared in my college literary journal, Homespun, in 1977. I believe I had The Summer of '42 in mind when I wrote the poem. Ironically, I didn't see the movie until many years later, but something about its advertisement touched me. Am I the only poet who ever wrote a love poem for Jennifer O'Neil after seeing her fleeting image in a blurb? At least in that respect, I may be unique! In any case, the movie came out in 1971 or 1972, so I was probably around 14 when I wrote the poem.
Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch
She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.
And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems …
that a little more darning may gather loose seams.
She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; …
only the nervously pecking needle
pricks her to motion, again and again.
escape!
by michael r. burch
for anaïs vionet
to live among the daffodil folk . . .
slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . .
suddenly pop out
the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . .
minuscule as alice, shout
yippee-yi-yee!
in wee exultant glee
to be leaving behind the
LARGE
THREE-DENALI GARAGE.
bachelorhoodwinked
by Michael R. Burch
u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!
u
are
chic
as a sheikh's
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom's been overthrown!
Originally published by Brief Poems
Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch
Where you have gone are the shadows falling …
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
… do you not hear me calling?
Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen …
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
… is silence at last your anthem?
'Fascination With Light' is a poem that probes the dangerous nature of desire, in terms of the moth drawn to the flame that burns, and yet it keeps coming back for more. It's a wonderful poem about the darker side of love.