Infinity
Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.
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Mike’s notes: ​​“I wrote ’Infinity’ as a teenager in high school, around age 18. The poem was originally longer, but I was never happy with the longer version. I thought the first two stanzas were superior to the remainder of the poem, and at some point it occurred to me to let the poem end where it does now. It was only after I pared the poem down to the first two stanzas that I considered it publishable. I now consider ’Infinity’ to be one of my best poems. It’s one of the early poems that made me feel like a ’real poet,’ along with ’Reckoning/Observance,’ ’Styx’ and a few others. I wrote ’Infinity’ in sympathy with someone considering suicide. The closing lines say that I, too, have felt darkness and despair, and have felt utterly alone. The hope of the poem is that we are not alone because someone else understands and sympathizes. ’Infinity’ is my ’Bridge Over Troubled Water.’
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“’Infinity’ was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses (for a whopping $10, my first cash payment) then subsequently by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Setu (India), Better Than Starbucks, Borderless Journal (Singapore), Motherbird, Poetry Life & Times, Formal Verse (Potcake Poet’s Choice), The Chained Muse, and New Lyre. ’Infinity’ has also been read online by David Gosselin and Ben W. Smith.“
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Michael R. Burch is one of the world’s most-published poets, with over 11,500 publications, including poems that have gone viral. This does not include self-published writings; if self-published writings were included, Mike’s total publications would be well over 20,000. Mike has also had 74 poems set to music by composers, from swamp blues to classical. He is also a longtime editor, publisher, and translator of Jewish Holocaust poetry and poems about the Trail of Tears, Hiroshima, Ukraine, the Nakba, and school shootings. Mike’s full biography may be read here.
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