Poems by Beverly Burch

Psalm of the Blue Ridges

by Beverly Burch

From Canary Fall 2018

Beverly lives in Oakland between the hills of the Coastal Range and the SF Bay which drains the sixteen rivers of Northern California.

Yea, we walk through wooded hollows where
we once courted love and meet only the animus
of male rifles. We fear.

Suffer blood of the possum and secretive quail,
crash of the doe through the Doghobble.

We lie down beside the sweet laurel
amid toxic detritus of three-day partiers
who anoint themselves with firewater.

Our faith rests in mountain women picking banjos
who lead us from still waters to the two-step.
May the scent of calycanthus prepare us for slumber.

Mountain bikes crunch on gravel
and rampant machinery of developers rattle our ears.
Surely summer homes will overtake us.

We give thanks to ginseng and flame azalea,
autumn-hung hills that preserve us. The rusty
rod and staff of a trail sign. Yea, it comforts us.

And if we stray in the yellow buckeye
or dense basswood, surely the lone Ranger
and her green truck will arrive.

© Beverly Burch

Psalm of the Four Corners

by Beverly Burch

From Canary Fall 2018

Alleluia with the crow and bobcat.
Let our anthems roll through the desert. For here
in the Great Basin there’s solitude.

Once we ascended high places of Zion.
Yea, verily, now we look down
on Airstreams and concessions stands.

Once Baptist Draw and Upper Chute Canyon
echoed in descant. Now engines of combustion
desecrate stone arches. Black Mesa
and the Kolob reveal larceny.

Make a joyful noise with the tambor and hubcap,
sojourn in gullies of thrice-broken dreams.
Beseech backpackers to leave no scat,
pray new age shamans and ATVs run out of gas.

Blessed be the deer and the antelope.
May 10-gallon hats of militant grazers
blow through the rabbitbush.

The silence of the rufous Escalante,
the crusted spine of the Chuska
will lead us to deliverance.
And all the days of his life may Old Paint
ride around real slow. Amen.

© Beverly Burch

Psalm of the Glass City

by Beverly Burch

From Canary Fall 2018

Walk through the forests of glazed towers—
behold, no acreage below, only light-belted
buildings, the high rise of suited workers.

Mountains tremble in their reflection,
clouds shiver across board rooms—
how elegant the race toward dystopia.

Figs, almonds and willows
grow on rooftops. Bee and bee-eater
nest in parapets.

Truly the poor were driven out
with the deer mice. Splinters of the past
rot under us and overhead,

only a blue limit. Shrill, the harbor’s whistle,
clang-clang of silver.

Spotted cats, mink, fat-tailed fox ran
before trappers. Before sawmills, before miners,
carboniferous mosses slept in hillsides.

Before explorers. Before settlers or sightseers.
Who remembers native earth raising
red cedars? They alone scraped the sky.

Psalm of the Traffic Stream

by Beverly Burch

From Canary Fall 2018

In the ceaseless onrush of I-80
clouds fly at us like soggy angels.
Stippled waters of the Bay murmur lunacy.

We thirst for the slow life yet hunger
for speed, turn our heart’s gears at ten miles
over the limit.

Everyone has destinations.
Verily, we sing the fascination of velocity,
of flirting with deadlines and white-knuckling it.
Behold self-righteous ones who barrel
three lanes across rush hour.

Let us rejoice instead in upright travelers
and pray for deliverance from adolescents
who straddle the line while texting,
the stench of the big rig.

May we learn to be late for the appointment,
to be late for everything, not show up at all.
And blessed be the small voice
of the indolent children we once were
who yearn to return to leafy solitudes.

Yea, how easy to drift, this road a cut artery,
the familiar one-way. And should a drunken motorist
demolish us, may we dwell among
rutted backroads forever.