Early poem: Michael R. Burch, ‘Will There Be Starlight’
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?
*****
Michael R. Burch writes: “The real test of a poem, for me, is whether I can remember it or not. If I can’t remember a poem, if it doesn’t leave a lasting impression, it simply vanishes like a windblown tumbleweed and cannot be a “keeper.” I decided to apply an “instant recall” test to my own poems and translations, to see which ones leapt to mind first. Ironically, or perhaps not, several of these poems turned out to be about memories and/or how the human memory works, or sometimes doesn’t. ‘Will There Be Starlight’ is one.
“I wrote it around age 18 as a high school student and it has been published by TALESetc, Starlight Archives, The Word (UK), Poezii (in a Romanian translation by Petru Dimofte), The Chained Muse, Famous Poets & Poems, Grassroots Poetry, Inspirational Stories, Jenion, Regalia, Chalk Studio, Poetry Webring and Writ in Water. ‘Will There Be Starlight’ has also been set to music by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton and read on YouTube by Ben E. Smith. To have a poem written as a teenager translated into Romanian, set to music by a talented composer, performed by one of the better poetry readers, and published in multiple literary journals was not a bad start to my career as a poet!”
Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth, their son Jeremy, two outrageously spoiled puppies, and a talkative parakeet. Burch’s poems, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, epigrams, quotes, puns, jokes and letters have appeared in hundreds of literary journals, newspapers and magazines. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, and, according to Google’s rankings, a relevant online publisher of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears and the Palestinian Nakba. Burch’s poetry has been taught in high schools and universities, translated into 19 languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, set to music 61 times by 32 composers, from swamp blues to classical, and recited or otherwise employed in more than a hundred YouTube videos. To read the best poems of Mike Burch in his own opinion, with his comments, please click here: Michael R. Burch Best Poems.
Photo: “Star Girl” by Tobias Mayr is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
