Tag: longing

Window

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 7 Comments
Photo by Amin Alizadeh: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-behind-window-12064720/

Through the window, quiet rain.
Through the window, a woman’s
hands arced in morning prayer.

If not rain, I would be a Thumbelina
sliding into the silky bell-bottoms
of flowers. If not hands, I would be
the day cupped between,
still secret-sweet.

If a flower, I would proceed brazenly
blossom by ecstatic blossom
down the winding April streets.
If the day, I would warble amazed
through all my encounters.

And if from a dark cave of longing
came the strength to thrust aside logs
of bark mulch, I would say love
itself sprouted green and slender
in the sun-slanted garden.

From across the room, you come
toward me. What would it take
to meet the horizon most feared
and sails flapping, drop anchor
in the storied harbour of your arms?

Through the window, the steam of rain
falling now into light, the backyard
cedars leaning toward us, generous
limbs outstretched, as if to say—
all it takes is yes.

Another older poem, first published in North Shore Magazine in 2008.

Origami of Longing

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 10 Comments
Photo by Jill Wellington from Pexels

This poem is one of four just published in the anthology “easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles” and has also been nominated for a Pushcart prize. My deep thanks to editor d. ellis phelps for this honour and for its inclusion in such a heartwarming book! And for those who’d like to read further or gift it, it’s available for a very reasonable price on Amazon http://easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles (US) and http://easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles (Canada)

easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles by [d. ellis phelps]

By Myself In Mazatlan

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 6 Comments

davide-sibilio-quOy9JPjEKs-unsplash
Photo by Davide Sibilio on Unsplash

Night here, alone, makes me unfaithful
to the woman we both know:
easy to give my heart away
to a stranger
wandering the beach

of my innermost shore,
the crash of the ocean’s ivory keys
drowning the do-re-mi
that has played
me for years,

the air so loose and warm,
all the old clothes
must be pulled off,
my body shown
for what it is—

a sweat
of holy longing, faithful
only to what seems to be
last call for living
this other me.

One of several versions of another Mexico poem. Maybe I’ll post the others sometime and see if you like one over the other….

Two, By Fire

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 13 Comments

janice-gill-qzvMCrzEEEw-unsplash
Photo by Janice Gill on Unsplash

Wood laid on the hearth and lit,
the bright tomorrows stacked,
the least flame fanned
into a wicked spritely dance.

Hand over hand they sat, barely
woman and newly man, thigh
against thigh like the burning logs
coupled with fantastic longing.

No thought that in the heart’s smithy
the heat of those moments would forge
lifelong demands, the combustible
hour smouldering into years

or that a blazing light, unstoked,
could thin to a dying glow.

This poem first appeared in Ristau: A Journal Of Being, edited by the brilliant Robert L. Penick, in January 2019.

Oak Tree

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 2 Comments

andrew-ruiz-35037-unsplash
Photo by Andrew Ruiz on Unsplash

Its aged roots like umbilical cords
never severed,
still pushing into the womb
of their earth mother.

Its stalwart trunk
at the centre of the dancing
leaves, belled
with acorns.

Its free splay of limbs
that invite
no posturing of the soul,
human or not.

The buried questions
that find their way here,
some even answered
in a mutely mysterious way.

This is the great oak
whose address I remember
whose gnarly throne of silence
I ascended once in a dark hour

when the moon, with a fatherly hand,
drew an amazing gasp
of stars
down around my shoulders:

the light by which the bark of my body
listened, then became the listening
of lobed leaves
for more than wind or rain,

became the long roots
longing,
until I too reached from the earth that held me,
with praising hands.

This is a poem from my first chapbook “Stealing Eternity”.

Sometimes, A Heron

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 2 Comments

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

stands like a bearded yogi
in the willow-edged stream
that runs under the main road
an easy block from the sea,
waiting for his own kind
of traffic.

At that intersection
of necessity and desire,
it is no accident when
the still life breaks from
its green-daubed canvas
with the long, scissored plunge
of his beak, and swallows whole
and writhing, the little fish
that almost made it.

Sometimes, in the rivering
silence between two hearts,
I am stalked by
an elegant longing
and taken suddenly
by its gleaming need
to live.

And hope I do not
reach too slowly
into the sea-deep amber
light of its promise,
like these bare and slender
branches that have crept from
their tangled weep of shadows,
blossoms pending.

This first appeared in North Shore Magazine and is included in my chapbook “Stealing Eternity”.