Encore No More

Encore No More
by Gideon Burton
at the passing of the family dog

Sometimes you lay paws forward, like a sphinx,
the living room your Egypt to command.
The other dog would wait for second drinks;
you were the alpha canine, small, yet grand.
With springing leaps you stripped the trees of birds,
whose siblings chirped in anger at the kill.
Your midnight barking prompted naughty words;
your shedding made our vacuuming a thrill.
You were a runner, worming under fences,
who cost us money at the city pound;
a fugitive who loved repeat offences --
that is, until that auto mowed you down.
     Despite the bites, the barking, and the mess.
     Your liveliness we'll miss, I do confess.

Sparrow's Flight

Sparrow's Flight
by Gideon Burton
after a passage from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England

The swift flight of a sparrow through a room,
this present life, compared to the unknown
abyss beyond the recent or the soon,
deep ignorance that frames our fleshy bones.
We sit at supper, warmed by friends, by fire
while rain or hail attack the bruising roof;
then, suddenly, arrives the tiny flier,
in one door, out the other. There's the proof:
however warmly safe within this space,
the bird is but a fractioned moment's guest.
So much of life is fluttered, winging haste;
the rising sun is setting in the West.
     From out of Winter, fast returning there;
     We are but sparrows, beating thinning air.


Original passage:
"The present life man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant." [source]

Photo: flickr - Flavio@Flickr (adapted)

Geese in Flight

Geese in Flight
by Gideon Burton

Observing Vs of geese that weave the clouds
Their squawking, needles sharp in cottoned air
Their liquid wings make currents in the crowds
Of stray reflections, those that hover, fair
As moonlight lingering or coming dawn,
I wonder why their necks are straight as nails
Their heads are beads of ink, their winging strong
Against October even as it fails
To snare them with its traps of cooling wind
They crease the smooth horizon, growing faint
In sound, in sight, in cries grown melting thin
Against the western south, its thinning paint
        Enveloping the parting birds, their flight
        Of woven wandering, their sinking out of sight.


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 - meltsley

Radioactive Frog

Radioactive Frog
by Gideon  Burton


I fed my frog uranium. Bad choice.
She's hopping mad, and I can't say I blame her.
There's something croaking awful in her voice,
and now I have my doubts I'll ever tame her.
It used to be her buggy eyes were blank,
but now they seem to radiate a passion.
This started out as just a little prank,
but something's changed about my froggy's fashion.
Her clammy skin was camouflaged with greens,
but that has changed; she blushes citric lava.
I fear the stuff has now rewired her genes;
her spit is spiked with alcoholic guava.
     Amphibian with orange electric skin,
     the aliens are now your next of kin.
    

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: CMU 3rd Year Studio