reading room

Epitaph for the Tomb of the Unknown Poet

May 11, 2020 No Comments

The tomb of the unknown soldier contains the remains
of one unknown soldier disinterred in France
and reburied in the tomb.   
 
The Canada’s Missing website lists 229
unidentified remains of men and women
who died in the last 50 years.  
Further, in 2014 the City of Toronto 
buried 281 identified but unclaimed remains.  
Where is the tomb for the unknown poets 
among them?


Epitaph for the Tomb of the Unknown Poet
 
ungerminated seed
unpolished stone
unrealized Apollo
who wrote in water
and on air
whose name left lips
whose love a feather touch
fell far
 
life-hardened withdrawn
uncertain of the way
broken heart in flesh
entombed within
this stone
the bones of unknown poet
whose name if ever known
may be Anon
 
  
Mia
March 2017
 
 

two small verses by two different Mias

May 4, 2020 No Comments

cerulean sky
soft clouds calling forth new lambs
at last clear seeing

mia burrus 2019

what gifts can we give you, Mila Grace,
tiny jewelled shrine from which all gifts spring,
you so perfectly gifted?
 
gramia
may 2020
 

Two poems for the times

April 20, 2020 No Comments

A brief quarantine diary
 
 
-no alarm!
                the joy of second breakfast
                and the oblivious birds
                perhaps get dressed – for them
 
-haiku?
                entirely insufficient
                to experiment with impunity on rhymes
                for pandemic, quarantine, immunity
 
-trivially
                fare thee well, small talk
                not even the dull weather merits
                a mutter
 
-seriously
                like baseball
                scores
                statistics
                but what I want to know – truly – is, how are you?
 
-carry on
                the evening sky is clear
                of planes bound for Paris
                and London – keep calm and ….
 
 

Reading the Old Master
 
 
Each morning in March
I studied a verse of the Tao
Te Ching.  Lao Tzu,
wise as a baby new
to the world, wrote these words:
 
the tree you can’t reach
your arms around grew
from a tiny seedling.

Think: the power of life
resides in alveolus and capillary,
the tiny, the tenuously held.
 
And think: the tiniest thing
-a butterfly’s wing-
can blow our house down,
can empty planes, fill up
hospital beds, shutter shops
and schools, sever sweet
intimacy, scatter brains,
cancel everything going.
 
No, not everything:
not the tree you can’t reach
your arms around,
not the tiny seedling.
 
Unable, for now, to take refuge
in words, I take refuge,
for now, in spring’s sun.
 
 
 
Mia Burrus
April 2020 

Leslie Street Spit – Part 2- At Once Past and Future

April 10, 2020 No Comments

 impossible to know if anyone beyond our time will walk here and dig 
  
 chicory flowers
 blue the brownlands
 wind and I sigh
  
 perhaps they will hypothesize a lost civilization, divine a weird economy 
  
 sprays of rebar
 shopping mall floor
 rain slicked
  
 perhaps they will ponder the nature of the cataclysm,  postulate a plague  
  
 old wall …
 sun-warmed tile
 clinks underfoot
  
 impossible to tell what we liked best - to dig, to build, or to destroy
  
 shivered concrete 
 paved good intentions 
 freeze thaw freeze …
  
 perhaps we liked the familiarity of the cycle, though it seems we called it progress
   

Spring Songs

March 29, 2020 No Comments

 
 Comes spring 
 and the gibbous moon, 
 draws washtub-bass
 plunks and plonks
 from the night frogs
 singing in the inky pond.
 The green hills 
 are gray as shadow,
 the shadows black
 as void.
 The frogs sing
 in their way;
 the moon shines
 in its way;
 to themselves
 to each other.
  
 By day you can see
 the lay of the land
 before all manner 
 of things spring
 up and make you 
 lose your way
 among the flowers.
 Birds loop unhindered
 among bare branches
 racing to build nests
 with the fines that
 have melted out 
 of the snow, 
 and then wait
 for leaves to open
 a cooling canopy 
 over their heads. 
  
 By day other frogs whine 
 and whine like clotheslines,
 hours at a time
 till then they stop-
 and you wonder
 Why? though you
 and your woefully
 human hearing
 had been secretly wishing
 they’d just shut up
 for a while, so 
 you could better hear 
 the distant birds sing
 ‘exquisite’ ‘exquisite’.
 O spring songs of love and praise!
   

The Quill’s Lament

March 22, 2020 No Comments

 
 
  
 Admit it!  I looked better on the bird.
 Banded chestnut brown, I set tom turkey’s
 tail aquiver, reeling in the hens,
 though engineered with loftier design.
  
 Now I’ve fallen and been taken up
 in hand to serve a slave to gravity,
 you! and your existential angst.
 We scratch the surface and each dream we will soar.
                                       
  
 Mia Burrus
 May 2016