i
Adrift, not too much held, but like a kite,
its string let go of, not quite set to fly.
that takes off anyway toward just that height
it needs to not fall down, now dancing by
on updrafts, bits of breeze, comes love. “I try”
he tells them-some do hear- “to see
or grasp in special ways its hope. Just why
it still remains a brass ring thing to me
is clearly-there no better words-a mystery.”
ii
Just so, it fluttered there as if on wings,
a blur at first, not much to see or sense;
although, with motions, up-downs, wide circlings
about the sky becoming more intense,
I now had cause for hope–its routings, hence,
grown less circuitous, more fixed in time.
It was as if some longing now immense,
yet tender all the same, no more a crime
than breathing had, in fact, become a thing sublime.
Robert Burr received his B.A. in English Literature in June of 1998. He studied under William Matthews and Marilyn Hacker and left in 2006. Mr. Burr taught Freshman Composition at several CUNY schools between 1999 and 2008. Chapbook: Trading Bits of Dream, Ridgeway Press