Karen Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild
by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .
Midnight
when sadness dips its hand into your pool
and thoughts ripple down the quiet roads
upon which the ages like a vagabond has tramped
a tramp whose heels are sore upon the stones
as broken souls upon the skies above
are rendered in the fitful cloud
whose rain upon the chances mong the hills have
gathered in that pool
then look upon your rippled face
in its radiant darkness and the black troughs of its wavelets
and its undulating train and changing lines
see just what you are leaving
when the mirror evaporates
leaving smeared upon the
grime and dust pools and dusky plains
the combines of chance and merit
can rage upon the fire that fuels
the farthest parts of night, the darkest self
fired against the silhouettes
the shoulders of the mounting hills
the spangled hair and crests of moons
or in the blackness of the unlit day
beats isolations loneliness
distraught and slow and weeping as the sun herself
but when the soul is close to midnight
another day is just beginning