Love Rocks

creative commons licensed by James Jordan

Love Rocks

by Gideon Burton

for Karen

On balance, I am not -- not balanced, all
these years of trying (and I know I'm trying):
I run, careening, leaning, then I fall
again. (Just saying, not at all implying.)
And what a lovely sentiment to state
"You are the ballast force, the leveling,
the plumb line, ever true, my steady mate,
as constant as my constant life disheveling."
But you, my equal, mess with gravity,
creative force disordering with grace.
A steady state? to you, depravity:
you smiling think, and soon explodes our place.
   Our love has rocked us sleeping and awake,
   a living rhythm, holding as all breaks.

Sing to Me

I'm very lucky because I'm married to someone who cheers many people with her beautiful voice. Sometimes, it's the only thing I want to hear.

Sing to Me
by Gideon Burton

Build evenly with phrases made of sound
more pure than silent moonlit winter nights.
Construct with smoothest linen tones, with round
and moistened vowels your reply. In bright
hosannas or in humming whispers make
for me redeeming chords to crash and flow
as rivered springtime runoff coldly breaks
in halo sprays. Give me this way to know.
Let words dilate to thinnest wisps of vapor,
for it is but your voice I will attend.
Give up all eloquence, all pen and paper;
your melody sustain until the end.
     Perform this service, sing to me in song;
     compose me whole, with music, softly strong.

Photo: flickr - karenmburton
(used by permission)

Rebound

Today on her blog my wife posted a sweet valentine's story about her failed love and her true love. I'm the second one, happily. Her story is an interesting one. She was engaged to a fantastic guy; but it just wasn't right. I'm the rebound.

Rebound
by Gideon Burton

what happens is you find the world is hard,
that things you thought would stay dissolve and leave,
that people you have loved can leave you scarred,
that there is always time enough to grieve.

what happens, if you let it, though it's slow
and indirect, is providence, is grace,
divinity so subtle, yet He knows,
and finds you as your hoping starts to waste

what happens is imperfect, yet enough
to stoke the embers of your dimming light,
another comes whose had his share of scuffs
yet when you are together, dark grows bright.

Rebounding all our lives from constant shock,
resilient as our fingers interlock.

A Marriage is a Mystery

A Marriage is a Mystery
by Gideon Burton

A marriage is a mystery,  a ruse
of one-as-two and two-as-one, a rune
inscribing and deciphering, a loose
complexity, a symmetry attuned
to order and disorder, bending time
apart and back together as we sink
and rise in changing rhythms, sense the climb
of years and children, feel the ways we think
combine, contract, and overlap, and yet
in knowing more the knowing morphs to fresh
amazements: Have I ever known you? met
the woman-mother-friend when these all mesh?
     I cannot fathom either us nor you.
     I only know the mystery is true.

Photo: flickr - jnarin

At Rest

At Rest
by Gideon Burton

If there were other options, had the sound
not echoed from the lower canyons, had
the strains of Barber's violins not found
crescendos stronger than the snowfall, sad
against the season, over warm so soon.
If there were chances to betray the light
the children weave across their crooked loom
of chance enthusiasms, loosely bright.
But we are snared, entangled, bound to this,
to sudden graces, mercies tendered thick
as afternoons unpressured by a kiss
upon the forehead. Nothing left to kick:
     the pricking shards and nettles -- all at rest
     because you tire and sleep against my chest.

Photo: flickr - rrrodrigo

Go Broke With Me

Go Broke With Me
by Gideon Burton

The simple economics of my love
for her: supply supplied with time with her.
And as we spend, we find no price above,
below: production and consumption blurred,
our capital compounds as interest soars.
Though years add debts not payable in cash,
our warehouse of affection stocks fresh stores.
No need to fear our markets ever crash,
for we are fully vested, partners full,
and though our funds are taxed, at times distressed,
we balance steady, come both bears and bulls,
and count our assets in the ways we're blessed.
     Go broke with me, and you will find me thankful,
     far more than had I bullion by the bankful.

Photo: Luann Hawker, WholeGrainPhotography.net

Pimento

back off she's mine

Pimento
by Gideon Burton

Your love is the pimento, red and sharp
that slumbers in the olives’ salty cave.
One sample of that taste I nibbling crave,
and I become an angel with a harp.
Your love is a bazooka, armed and ready
a missile primed and smoking for its flight.
If only I could give your fuse its light,
we’d have a rocket reason to go steady.
Your love, an orchard ripe and overgrown,
and I the migrant minimum in wage.
Oh apple tree, please toss this dog a bone
at least an apple tender in its age.
     Your love is metaphor a mountain thick
     It’s getting past the words that is the trick.

Good Chemistry

After hearing today about some friends divorcing, I felt another one of those waves of gratitude for having a sound marriage. Thanks, Karen.

Good Chemistry
by Gideon Burton

They see you need some chemistry; as though
cologne adds zesty charm when on a date.
That's not the sort required in a mate,
not spritzer pepping up a rosy glow.
Ammonia for starters, so the flow
of ever-fresh forgiveness won't abate.
Plus milder solvents, suds to soften late
apologies, or balm to soften blows.
The chemistry is deeper, though, below
the skin and tissue, in the blood and bone,
the neurons trained to feel and to forgive.
Our bond is not with words; it's something stowed
in genes, the primal code. Our love is sewn
like atoms stitched to structure all that lives.

How Do I Love Thee?

Two sources of inspiration for today's sonnet. First, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's classic sonnet #43 ("How do I love thee, let me count the ways..."). I've copied it farther down. It is a tour de force. Look at how Browning makes you breathless as you careen from "depth and breadth and height" into those next lines, then pulls you into the aching of religious longing. Sweet. But as I began to write the imitation, Browning's sonnet got bumped as I began thinking of my own love. Today we spent time together, and life was very good.

How Do I Love Thee?
by Gideon Burton
after Elizabeth Barrett Browning (below)

Oh, I could start to count the many ways:
make breathy lists that spill into the ache
and awe of elemental longing; wake
my master metaphors whose spangled rays
I have reserved for rousing purest praise;
arrest all eating, sleeping, working, break
the beat of daily business for your sake--
Oh, I could start to count so many ways.
But as I pause my pen to gather strength
I hear you humming, as you often do,
and I remember how you love to sing.
and I forget the width and height and length
of all the counting I might do for you,
if words could summon what your singing brings.


Sonnet 43
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Let Her Speak

Let Her Speak
by Gideon Burton

I waste my words, encumbering thought with flesh,

all mashed in glottal mush, the meaning pressed

against the palate and the jilting thresh

of time, occasion, cues mistook or guessed--

She speaks my name as though to keep the air

from bruising it, as though upon her tongue

it lies, a flower petal thin and rare,

and any extra syllable, though sung

with grace, would loosen filaments or cells

and leave a shredded shell, a noise profane

and blank, no longer sounding down the well

of mystery, a label, fixed, inane. 

     My libels thrive on every breathing wave;

     she calls me once, and all my words behave.

Let Me Not to That Marriage: A Shakespeare Remix

Let Me Not to that Marriage:
A Shakespeare Remix
by Gideon Burton
in imitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet #116 (below)

Let's talk about the marriage of true minds:
admit it: the impediments make love
a sport, less stagnant when stagnation finds
the bland ennui of love's routine, that groove
that is an ever-fixed rut, that stark
vanilla boredom better stirred and shaken.
Good lovers love a tempest's test, a spark
of lightning lightening the granted taken.
Love lets us be Time's fools, to mate and seek
Spring love when mating makes the children come.
Love alters as we watch the toddlers peek
across the threshold toward bride and groom.
     If I were falsely constant to the past,
     our ripening love through error would be smashed.


Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Photo: flickr - Lindy Drew Photography

One More Sonnet in Her Name

One More Sonnet in Her Name
by Gideon Burton

Indulge me one more sonnet in your name,
My love, for you are subject I cannot
Exhaust.  Does thirsty earth grow bored with rain?
Could heaven by true Christians not be sought
Again and then again? As daily food
And yet more sweet to taste. As breathing’s breath
And yet more fresh and live. These are but crude
Comparisons, and yet as they from death
Preserve me, keep me whole and well, so you
Within the favor of your eye or in
The easy discourse we enjoy, or through
The daily chaos of the children’s din.
        Your presence is a godly gift and sure.
        Without you, love, no living I’d endure.



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.

I Promise

I Promise
by Gideon Burton

I’ll wake you with the mouths of flowers wet
against your warmer skin. I’ll brush the smoke
of waking with the voices we forget
too well, too soon. Not long from now the clock
of humid summer heat will swallow us.
The tadpoles of regret might wriggle loose
the mason lid; we may no longer trust
our wrinkled hands to finger well the noose
around the constellations, bulging whites
that bleed the sunlight pebbling through the arch
of nights against which flocks in arrows fight,
their straining necks half reaching to the stars.
I will remember lying here with you,
as though the water swallowed other truths.

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

Plea

Plea

by Gideon Burton

Bananas, ripened past their mellow hue;

A softened mango, cracked and spilling ooze;

The sponge of grapes, their tissue reddish blue;

Tart grapefruit, wet -- so hard it is to choose

Among the fresh, reviving fruits of earth.

Each calls to me with odored, breathy sweet.

I hunger for what quenches, sharp rebirth,

When lips the fruitskin pierces as they meet.

Perhaps I speak in metaphors of you,

My love, whose garden harvest ever yields.

Yet I withhold from seeing these as true

To you: who are much more than earthy fields.

       I stand with fruit inside a land of flavor,

       Yet hunger more for your forgiving favor.

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

My Love My Spring

It was one of those amazing Spring days in Utah today, an ironic counterpoint to the sadness of the funeral for a good man too soon gone. My wife was with me; that made all difference.  This is an imitation of Shakespeare's sonnet 29, included below.

My Love My Spring
by Gideon Burton

When circled by the burst and thaw of Spring,
and yet resisting still its warming rays,
I sift the hours, adrift in moods less clean
than joy, a derelict of tepid haze,
wishing me like those who pray and act,
pious like her, like him with faith in tact,
admiring moods this mood will not attract,
so petty with my sins and so exact;
Yet pushing past this vast and thin contempt,
upward glancing, facing to the east,
my hands entwine with hers whose warmth's unspent;
my little meal's transformed into a feast.
   For when I'm low and turn toward my wife,
   the failing fails, and living turns to life.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: Luann Hawker, WholeGrainPhotography.net

Sonnet 29
by William Shakespeare


When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Mystery, Miracle, Marriage

It's my wife's birthday today, and I've been listening steadily to all of her music, especially that nice rendition of Francis Cabrel's moody "C'etait L'hiver" that she put together yesterday, patiently learning the French pronunciation (as she'd done with the Portuguese version of Girl from Ipanema awhile back), and doing take after take until she was happy with the mix. This woman is incredible, pumping out weekly tunes for music Mondays and doing her own sound production, while keeping up a thoughtful daily blog, caring carefully for four sons, and being a steady companion to me. I'm blessed to know her, and intend to know her better.

Mystery, Miracle, Marriage

by Gideon Burton

The more that you reveal through image, thought,

and through your honey-alto-angel voice,

the more your mysteries compound. I'm caught

in awe, in gratitude we made the choice

to hand-in-hand the lengths of twisting time,

to share the casual miracles that come

when man and woman choose to rhyme,

despite what jolts and jarrings have undone.

I kneel, I find you kneeling next to me.

We interlace our worries and our tears.

I stand, I find you standing next to me.

We alternate who comforts and who cheers.

     Of what's to come, I haven't any clue,

     But I can trust the peace I know with you.

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

Your skin is cool against my smoothing touch

Your skin is cool against my smoothing touch
by Gideon Burton


Your skin is cool against my smoothing touch.
Forgive me if I linger longer near your cheek
And if I nuzzle nearer as you lie in such
Relaxing poses. Let me grow more weak
In knowing you asleep and calm.  Your breath
Inhales, exhales, inhales against the beat
That I can hear so strong within your chest.
But white and welcoming from head to feet,
Your cool and fragrant skin invites me back
To you, as though warm waterfalls had bathed
You fresh, replacing any life you lacked.
So still, you must have nodded as you prayed.
        My wife, I curl against your comfort touch.
        Don’t wake, no need to surfeit what’s enough.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: Luann Hawker, WholeGrainPhotography.net

Her hands have washed my children's skin

Today I'm thinking about my stressed out wife, too busy to recognize how awesome she is. So someone's got to step up and testify. 

Her hands have washed my children's skin

by Gideon Burton

Her hands have washed my children's skin

a thousand times.  Her eyes have traced their moods,

supplying comfort like a healing food.

Her arms have ferried loads of laundry in

and out of closets, washers, dryers.  Quick

to clean, and slow to salve a sobbing cheek.

Her skin has flushed with bright and ruddy heat

from ordering our little world.  The thick

and thin of rearing offspring, fixing meals,

of stroking fevered foreheads, making peace

amid the rhythmed din that robs our ease

--I haven't known a wound she couldn't heal.

     All this, as much as all her youthful glory,

     adds chapters thick to this our loving story.

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

Since I Toward Your Lively Mind

Since I toward your lively mind am drawn
by Gideon Burton


Since I toward your lively mind am drawn
as much as to that honey voice that smooths
a calming passion into reason's grooves--
Since I toward that rising dawn
that is your lovely face to gaze upon
have greedily consumed what I might lose--
I must resist the worship I could choose
from sights and sounds too ready to be gone
when you grow absent from your husband's side.
Have mercy: send me silent, written thoughts;
no metaphors-- use chastity of speech.
So easily distracted by my bride,
your very sense in senses' web is caught,
and I may only grasp what I can reach.

Fire and Music #1

There is a line from All About Eve where Betty Davis refers to love (somewhat dismissively) as "fire and music." It seems fitting to find -- within my wife's favorite film -- three words so apt in describing her. I thought I would use "Fire and Music" as a series title for my uxorious sonnets.

Fire and Music #1

by Gideon Burton

Not to a flower, not to mornings bright
Can I compare her whom I call my wife.
Her skin, her eyes, though lovely to my sight,
Conceal what matters: food and drink and life
To me, no less than water, bread and air.
And so of her topography, though fair,
No map I make for onlookers to stare.
I cannot dress with metaphors the bare
And simple substance of her company:
Companion strong in mind and single will
Who will to me so much so long so free
So give herself my hunger hungers still.
    While other men analogies compose
    She rhymes with me beyond a poet’s prose.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship