Fascination with Light

Death 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.

Michael R. Burch is the editor of The HyperTexts, on-line at www.thehypertexts.com, where he has published hundreds of poets over the past three decades. His poetry has been translated into fourteen languages, taught in high schools and colleges around the globe, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers. A five-time Pushcart nominee, his poems, translations and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary journals, including The Lyric, New Lyre, Romantics Quarterly, The Chained Muse, LIGHT, Measure, Southwest Review, The Chariton Review, The Chimaera, Brief Poems, Poem Today, Asses of Parnassus, Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing and The Best of the Eclectic Muse.