reading room

springtime

 
 the sky
 all sky
 empty of weather, of all but the bluest sky-blue
  
 the land
 all plain
 sepia-tinted oceans of grass rolling on
  
 the birds
 all black
 gloss in the sun and call in primordial tongues
  
 the moss
 all soft
 feather and pincushion emeralds studding the duff
  
 flash
 red tent
 spied from the train, somebody’s home in nobody’s wood
  
  
 April 2016 

barbados

 
 
 we are lorelei, draped on coral rocks
 with wet tresses. the rocks are sharp
 with the bones of the long dead,
 but the sailors are drunk and move off
 to waters that couldn’t be bluer.
 we too push off, away
 from the tchotchke vendors
 high on the hill, trying to lure us
 into ruin, with coconut bird-feeders,
 sea-shell what-nots,
 hand carved monkeys.
 we are unchained, but just unchained,
 from the ruins among the poison trees.
  
 2009  

Another Year

 time – from then to now to when –
 is thinner than
  
 the blank white page
 the champagne haze
  
 of last light’s ringing-in, now 
 rung out, faded hour
  
 why persevere
 to fete the arbitrary year
  
 why not the day – the sun at noon!
 why not the month -  all hail the moon!
  
 or like the fruitfly say
 hooray - I’ve lived for half a day
  
  
 mia burrus
 january 2016    

An end of year contemplation

No Bones About It

in the midst of this world / we stroll along the roof of hell / gawking at flowers

Issa (1762-1826), Transl by Sam Hamill

We drag our bones across the roof of Hell

as lost, alone. We ache for cold death’s knell

to quell the suffering of humankind,

in the belief perdition there would find.

The joy that’s here for our wide opened eyes

is neither down nor up, not earth or sky,

but that which lies within. So turn the page,

and dance upon that roof as Heaven’s stage.

Anne-Marie Burrus, John Allport

Ides of January 2018

The Window

(after Les Fenêtres by Mallarmé)

And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open and shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.   (Kahlil Gibran)

leached of blood red tones

the sturdy stones

cannot be breached – the setting

sun’s beyond the body’s

reach – but not the mind’s –

if you can keep that window

shining clean a lifetime’s sunsets

always gleam

mia burrus  feb 2018

where did this come from?

Swimming your slipstream I

fall I float

you plunge you

slip along streaming you

drink you kiss

I love I

live for the river

the lover

you are