The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch

for Harvey Stanbrough

I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.

Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.

This poem was originally published by The Raintown Review when Harvey Stanbrough was the editor, then later by Mindful of Poetry. I wrote the poem out of dissatisfaction with the strange idea that poetry should consist entirely or primarily of concrete images. Would the “experts” who espouse this bizarre idea junk the great soliloquies of Shakespeare and Milton and the direct statement poems of A. E. Housman? It also bears noting that the twin titans of English modernism, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, did an awful lot of “telling” rather than always “showing.” Keywords/Tags: Harvest, roses, images, imagery, imagism, meter, time, beat, rhyme, shimmer, gloss, perfume, reap, reaping, gossamer

Harvest is over,
Crops are in, and
Falls's first killing frost
Stirs feelings of melancholy
Sustained by winter's cold,
With its bare trees,
Migration, hibernation,
Wisdom of fallow fields and
Mice attempting entry
During long, cold nights.
Yet farmers are never idle,
Caring for their animals,
Cleaning and fixing equipment,
Checking their fences,
Cleaning fields and
Clearing tree lines.

Viktor Frankl's faith was trust that one's life holds meaning
trust in ultimate meaning...
t'me,
My word trust holds true and rest crammed together for support
to stand under knowing the entire set of upgrades
and lock changes,
to mankind-basic knowledge of good and evil, since my last
a filtration algo-i'll-go rythmn and hyme adjusterho rholler
that powers ourkind past wayless places
when language joins the gamers playing for glory, at any cost,

Old Glory

per pose haps need happening,
sans happy-ness,
what ness could ever be?

What's the haps? Don't lie.
What's goin' on? Don't lie. Say,

Regular stuff. My side's winnin'. A *** in Pershing Square,
under the Jesus Saves sign, brought that to mind,

Fifty years ago, for him, looked like "no direction home"

Sansara sera, whatever sera selah

Nihili, to the max, right. But,
we know
other than this now,
this
breath

thinking process of cognitive rythm building
thunderwordmagicalthoughtsenchanghgken

coughing final, expulsion of some invading barb,
a fiery dart, setting cooling

actions sponding to ligands loosed when the
third aveili in a micron failed to expell

smooth
slowww whoooshhhhh
in-a-ginning be da vita, see...

say I think I know this feeling

qwhy-esse quiessence,
a settling,
after all that could be shaken, was.

acid to water, or water to acid?
who would gno?