To Carry Sorrows

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To Carry Sorrows
by Gideon Burton

a meditation upon Isaiah 53:3-6 (KJV)

To carry sorrows, this the pressing weight
the press and wait, uncertain how much more
or what it's for, these carried sorrows, freight
toward a destination without shore
nor harbor, harboring the laden craft
suspended in a deepening depth, a grief
whose eddies slowly spin this shaking craft
til all is tearing, torn upon the reef.
To carry sorrows, bury sorrows deep
within the organs' darkened tissue rich
with wrong, the layered cankered cancers keep
their host and host the oily muck and pitch
and how can I abandon cells and skin
to leave these sorrows, even now, to Him?

Dawn

Dawn
by Gideon Burton

Oh, yes, but even quieter: a tone
composed of woven starlight, dim and old
and slowed between the galaxies; a zone
not silent but just warmer than the cold,
a place of waiting, patient, like the stone
that sleeps within the pyramids; a fold
across the atmosphere, a broken cone
of twilight where the vespered prayers are told.
Oh, yes, the beat of aging hearts, the bone
that keeps the tissues whole, the liquid gold
of porous hours as you walk alone
along the seashore as the tide is rolled
     toward infinities you number, sewn
     with every vision tasted, touched, and known.

Photo: flickr - hsunaqua

Out of Prism

Out of Prism
by Gideon Burton

As though I were a dark and sandy waste
that pressured proof had furnaced -- watch me melt
into a fragile glass, unshaped, unfaced,
but knocked to shards. It is the way I've felt,
as though this scrap of brittle crazy glass
lay muted till the quiet, steady rays
of sunlight touched my edge and through me passed,
in prism colors wedging through the haze.
What's this? Somehow unwoven, whitest light
refracted in the fragment, spilling blue
and orange, ivory and green. My sight
dispersed across a spectrum, seeing through.
     Opaque with peace, this had not been my course,
     without the heat, the melting, breaking force.

Photo: flickr - jcburns

Stream

Stream
by Gideon Burton

The pebbles underneath the quiet stream,
like coins, like treasure, paving cold the length
of whispering water from the brook. It seems
I cannot touch them. I don't have the strength
to pass a hand between the curtains back
to childhood, wading in that water's surge,
just slow enough to place a leaf and track
its nimble voyage till it crossed the verge,
that grate that swallowed everything within
the corrugated throat beneath the road.
I slipped and fell there once, a taste of sin,
bone cold beneath the water as it flowed.
     And yet, the sunlight winding through those trees.
     And yet, I taste that water by degrees.

Photo: flickr -Mandie-

Gratitude

Gratitude
by Gideon Burton

As though it were a platitude, abstract,
a homily, a pleasantry, or thought,
commodified into a thing that's bought
or traded, something needed to transact
one's business, lubricant for social tact.
Perhaps, to some degree. Yet I am caught
within a web of wonder: moments fraught
with suns and thunder, atoms coiled and cracked
as moonlit evenings open their array
of silent supernovas mutely splayed.
In gratitude I find that ballast scope
that centers me in patient, latent hope.
In gaping thanks, routine as meals or sleep,
I'm safe from depths in fathoms brightly deep.

Photo: flickr - jmtimages

Still Life: Woman and Blue Marble

I came across this photo posted by Douglas Wheelock, one of the NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He took this of a crew member,  Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, who returned to Earth after six months in space in September, 2010.

Image: Astro_Wheels via twitpic

Still Life: Woman and Blue Marble
by Gideon Burton

She'd walked in space, an engineer, afloat
above the metal pods and trusses, far
above the humid atmosphere, thin moat
of air dividing most of us from stars.
How easy to recede into the black,
that deep-dark silent cold beyond outside
where gamma rays and meteors attack,
and yet, like gods, the astro-sailors glide.
As though upon a river bank she lay,
unhurried by the passing of the day,
content to hear what stream or sky might say,
she followed drifting clouds where they might stray.
     Be still as she, absorb the poetry;
     and with her walk in space and sky and sea.

Again the Grandeur

Again the Grandeur
by Gideon Burton

Again the grandeur, craggy canyon steep
with walled antiquity, with wintered time,
with pressures muted, violence in heaps
of silent folded rock face misaligned.
Again the cracking ashen dome whose wet
persistence chisels granite, limestone. Damp
with Autumns aggregating subtle threats
as Winters clutch the stones with icy clamps.
Again the slow erosion. Nothing holds
the crumbling running out of sandy night.
Despite the shivering toward a cold
conclusion, nothing, nothing shades that light
     That sun returning, shaking off the covers,
     The warming sky, the shuddering of lovers.

Photo: flickr - snowpeak

Ready for Sleep

Ready for Sleep
by Gideon Burton

Against the leather atmosphere I press
A wrinkled face. Expiring daylight scrapes
The hours jaggedly into the west
Where grizzled clouds are hung like dirty drapes
In limp abandonment. Uneasy birds
Still rummage through the odd remainders of
The songs they have forgotten. Healing words
Grow thick and sour, fail to crest above
The briny fog engulfing waxy ears.
And who will watch the yellow-needled pines?
And who forgive the graying flowers' fears?
The sunset spills the earth with bloody winds.
     I watch the sinking, ready for a sleep
     As thorough as these seasons and as deep.
  

Photo: flickr - manfred-hartmann

Whole

Whole
by Gideon Burton

Sometimes –– I cannot reason how it comes
to this when all is wind within the wind,
a swirl of molding leaves as I sit dumb
inside the knotted storms of time or sin ––
and yet sometimes it comes to me, a whole
no noise dividing can undo, no crack,
no bruise, no splitting chaos to the soul ––
a something pure, no sagging split, no lack.
Is it a song? A wisp of air come clean?
My parents with their arms of peace and strength?
For no embrace could be so firm, so lean,
to have, to hold, till sleeping comes at length.
  No questions will I shore against this gift
  That heals me, chasms spanned to breach the rift.

Photo: flickr - Mooganic

Cogito Ergo Sum

Cogito Ergo Sum

by Gideon Burton

I think therefore I am I think I am

as solid as these curds of milky thought

I think quite certain where it is I stand

I think and in my swirling thoughts am caught

I think as tethered semi-solid sure

upon the unembodied continent

where notions rise or fall or sharply blur

but this I think is what I know or meant

how silly are the tangibles that sum

cognition for whom matter seems to matter

and don't you think ideas can soothe or stun

that deep within we know the ink-blot's splatter?

     Rene Descartes, with Hamlet rub your chin;

     to think is not to die, and there's the sin. 

Photograph: flickr - Stephen Poff 

The Surf

The Surf
by Gideon Burton

Consider this: the hushing surf recedes,
the foamy salt massages speckled sand,
then rushes in again as though a grand
crescendo would engulf the bending reeds.
Observe again: with tides the ocean bleeds,
as though the ballast dropped by time had rammed
the belly of the watery beast, undammed
the lower fountains, now erupting seeds
of mint fluorescence, bursting plankton pods
in deep arrays of filtered, flickering light.
Descend and breathe: the waters bring you home
within the firmament, the womb of God,
the saline matrix churning years of night
to paste against the edges of this dome.


Photo: flickr - karma police

Hungering

Hungering
by Gideon Burton

I cannot trust what isn't hungered for
in time by bodied spirits longing long
for some delivery a way toward
away around a single note a song
sustaining waning past the feigning wrongs
I have indulged beyond an even score
that scrapes its measurings its rusty tongs
a rallentando code that's less that's more
that's evening the twilight's pebbled shore
unsure if silence surf or air is strong
the strength of wanting wanting more and more
a place to plant desires where they belong
inside a trust carved out by weariness
by clarities bestowed by weariness

Photo: flickr - steve took it

Unruined

Unruined
by Gideon Burton

The trick is too dismantle what remains,
that sturdy infrastructure mutely strong
against your best revisions: soul and brains
and muscled managing to purge the wrong,
bend back the wayward will to good, for good.
From wounds to wisdom rising day by day,
by every measure bettering as one should,
escaping damp anxieties of gray.
Yet like a virus sleeping in the spine,
those rugged remnants biding out the time,
prepared for when a darker rhythm chimes
all clear, the better part of him's resigned.
     I cannot rust that rubble, raze that hell;
     But greening growth unchokes me from the spell.

Photo: flickr - Sebastian Niedlich (Grabthar)

Night Walk

Night Walk
by Gideon Burton


Thick flames, as thick as long and ruddy hair,
Entwine the evening sky with smoky mist.
The sweetened stars are dropping everywhere,
As though they sighed from being lightly kissed.
Around this house, this city, lying still
Beneath the windy canyon’s haunting breath
I walk, as though by walking I might fill
Much more than lungs, chase back the death
Of seasons changed and changing, twining flames
Within a common night. Before I can
Inhale the warming air, it cools. The same
Enchantment bleaches white each colored plan.
     Before I can one season hold and feel
     It buckles, breaking, soft as milk or steel.

Image: flickr - Grufnik

thoughtcode

thoughtcode
by Gideon Burton

the other thoughts the ones that get away
from you like tadpoles slipping from the jar
and wriggling out of reach in marshes far
from grasping fingers just too hard to stay
some things as slippery as the frightened prey
that scuttles from its predator bizarre
how some things stain and stick like smoking tar
while others turn to ash and float away
in rhythms of emotion through a code
I cannot start to crack but how I think
I think I know enough to sense the flaws
how some of it though cooked is always raw
despite my charcoal vigilance it winks
at logic routing through its golder nodes

Image: flickr - tom.hensel

Daybreak

Daybreak
by Gideon Burton

With shredded halos sunrise dews the grass.
The crickets sleep; the starlight yields to mute
pastels that curtain earth with airy mass
as yawning birds uncase their throaty flutes.
No hovering moon to freshen lovers’ sighs,
no cloak of blackness hides their furtive hands.
Whoever wakens early, wakens wise,
yhey say, as though a partner to a plan
as flowing cool as milk between the berries,
the ones that tartly wake me with the juice
of finished rest. The haze of sleeping tarries,
enough to put imagined worlds to use.
        The blurry threshold's vapored with the dawn;
        yet slowly from the night to day I'm drawn.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - aussiegal

After Miracles

After Miracles
by Gideon Burton

The spectators of miracles divide:
the ones who reason everything away;
the ones in fearful awe who run and hide;
and others who, beholding, sink to pray,
who tell their children, Wait, remember this,
remember on those cold and bitter days,
or when confusion casts its numbing mists,
or sun or moon withholds their warming rays--
that we were present when He showed His face
and raised our feeble spirits from the dead;
that we have known unmeasured tender grace
from what was seen and heard and softly said.
     To treasure light, to share its burning peace,
     compounds the wonders that have never ceased.



 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo:flickr - cayusa

Desert Night

Desert Night
by Gideon Burton

My only measuring, the fingered soil
I loosened in the cooling evening, dark
and light. And though the very skin of oil
that lines the distant highway’s asphalt, marks
the jagged underdressing of the sky,
I don’t suppose the waving sage will sleep
away the windy desert. Time to try
how many wilted metals sigh and weep
as rain descends to seed their sides with rust.
The tire swing has worn away the grass,
and autumn heat has broken summer’s trust
in what would live, in what would turn and pass
beyond the meter doubled of my height,
no matter how the sinner dims the light.

---

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Bukutgirl

Time Remaining

Time Remaining
by Gideon Burton

If I had known how little time remained --
the thunderclap, the drench of summer rain,
the whine of dogs, the muddy gutters stained
with gurgling runoff; or the whistling train
that every midnight dopplers in and IN
and OUT and out, the umber incense made
by toasting toast, the staining of my chin
with cherry juice, the scraping razor blade
along her angled leg, the throats of old
acquaintances, the consonants that clack
or hiss, the steam of vowels hot or cold
the crickets strumming into Summer's black.
   The children sprouting, wild with downy grace;
   the evening stroking shadows on her face.

---

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - The Russians Are Here

Toward the Spices

Toward the Spices
by Gideon Burton

No less than sea foam dancing in the thin
reluctance dropping from the rising moon;
at least as much as vapored salt whose din
against the rocks and pier fills up the swoon
of old humidities. I have a boat
to launch against such listlessness, a sail
I’ve furled too tightly lest its fibers bloat
and founder me, though tacking hard the rail
of purling orients -– a ship of dreams
rewoven by the melodies of dusk,
a small but able craft that’s caulked and seamed
and rife with spices: cumin, curry, musk.
The spray explodes and douses all the wood;
the decks of heaven shiver where they stood

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Polifemus