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Origami Microchap
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Selected Poem(s)
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| Dreamtime Rocks |
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Click title to download PDF
Cover art by author
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In some Australian Aboriginal people’s
spiritual beliefs,
various stone outcrops represent
different ancestral spirits, and,
by touching the rock,
one can invoke the spirits for blessings
and communicate with Dreamtime.
- L.B.
Uluru
This evening, Uluru,
you channel the coming dark on your veined face,
immense flanks of stone blaze in the dying light;
you are campfire, orange, vermillion, ochre,
the sky a dazzling cerulean cape
flung up over your shoulders
so high it touches the early stars.
Clouds mimic your glory
in puffy skeins of citric and royal purple,
framing ancient hogan shape of stone
in arcs of visual pleasure.
Wild Bush flourishes antique gold
and sere green around you,
breathing slow breaths of contentment.
I could sit here watching
until the sky explodes with stars,
and you, sacred Uluru,
loom against the brilliant night
like a great, dark, sleeping beast,
Dreamtime guardian to us all.
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Gulaga is the place of ancestral origin
within the mythology of the Yuin people,
the Indigenous people of the area.
Gulaga itself symbolizes the mother
and provides a basis for
Aboriginal spiritual identity;
the mountain
as well as the surrounding area
holds particular significance
for Aboriginal women.
- L.B.
Gulaga/Mount Dromedary/Mother
Millions of years ago
you were born hot,
of igneous rock.
This evening you look so cool,
a blue cloud bank over
silken waters.
Mother of all,
I came into this world
as you did, flushed and enflamed,
lend me now your refreshing calm,
wisdom of aeons,
weight of composure,
as my aging body flies
ever skyward
toward dissolution.
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Wave Rock/Katter Kich
Looming
liquid-looking,
a stone wave
that will never break.
Rainbow Serpent made you,
dragging her belly,
drinking all the water,
so now, there is none.
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Wave Rock has cultural significance to
Ballardong people of Australia. Local
tribes believed that Wave Rock was a creation
of the Rainbow Serpent, and was created
in her wake by dragging her swollen body
over the ground after she had consumed
all of the water in
the land.—L.B.
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Ngannelong/Hanging Rock
Hanging Rock
hangs between
parallel worlds
Crenellations divide
your fortress of meaning,
aboriginal, European.
You send tempting
geological invitations;
shall I enter?
Leave your rough, golden spires behind?
Venture into magic spaces,
places I may not survive?
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Hanging Rock is a mamelon, created 6.25 million years ago by stiff magma pouring
from a vent and congealing in place.
Often thought to be a volcanic plug,
it is not. - L.B.
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Lauri Burke 2021
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| Meditation's Rise |
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover by Lauri Burke
♥
Dedicated to
Joan & Jon
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Meditation’s Rise
Glowing meridians penetrate black,
their bright stripes vertically leavening.
Rays, fanning, illuminate dense bracken
grown rigid and tense round inner heavens
Flight up such lit passageways, euphoric,
is most angelically serious,
leaving densely bosky, clinging auras,
loosing anxiety’s bind, hideous.
Climb bright ladders with your etheric self
burning, measuring not the miles traveled,
only ecstasy of the swift rise, wealth
of calm, of crippling fears unraveling.
Blink, find yourself on Elysian heights,
you, a body of scintillating light...
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Lotus Poster In the Birthing Center
Surely the lotus
under which you were born
participated in your passage.
On pond, afloat,
I know she felt your descent
sluicing down from a floating world.
I meditated
that her strong, waxy blossom
was my own flower opening.
And then you came,
my white lily, my darling,
my world.
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Prayer
Kindle my inner fire
light
slumbering talents,
insight -
turn them, like a tapestry
bright,
to the side where they need to shine.
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On Reflection
Flaws in my eyes splinter meditation
candle’s smooth waver into dancing spikes
reaching, giving ceiling illumination.
My busy thoughts submerge in teaching lights.
This evening sees me cradled in my bed,
early dark becomes a calming blanket.
Window open, breathing empties my head,
pulses expand, edges become plangent.
What was I worried about just before
these dreaming moments,
severed now from time?
Nothing matters on eternity’s shores,
only this, love and love and love sublime.
I see you there in softest radiance,
your soul dancing to love-light cadences.
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Tracking the Light
I heard a story once
about a man who sat
in a chair all day long
and watched the sunlight
track across his wooden floor,
he was content.
I sit kata,
on the inside of my eyes
sunlight dances
across my foundation’s sky,
I am happy.
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Poet’s Note - I am not referring to karate
forms with this use of Kata, rather I am
using the earlier the earlier meaning of
sitting in form to receive in a spiritual way -
“Kata in the traditional sense, is a
spiritual ritual.”
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Reflective Gift
My neighbor the moon in beauty rises,
lambent pearl fastened on sapphire velvet,
speaking heart’s ease, she often surprises,
all moods lift with her murmurings, stellate.
Tonight she flirts with the sailors’ North Star
who twinkles back in a friendly manner,
savors her light pink mantle from afar,
flashing fiery glances as he scans her.
When I am alone in gathering dark,
Luna’s balloon advent boosts my spirits,
reminds me, I too catch light in my heart;
convey sunshine to those who most need it.
La Sirena, generous guide and friend,
absorbs the luster she intends to lend.
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Lauri Burke © 2020
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| First Star - Infinite Chi |
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover art by poet
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First Star - Infinite Chi
First star am I, crying dibs upon the night,
surf surges with the moon seen full.
Sol in decline, we celestials tune lapis tints
to our own advantage,
black, white, diamanté, we are evening’s formal tuxedo,
our role to brake the overwhelming radiance of day,
we don’t give a fig about how hard it is to maneuver with zip in the dark,
the light we issue wags the tail of night,
our matte dark painting shows arms and vanes of subtle bright,
giddy radiance sent sparkling from suns eons away,
quite alien to the present day.
Oh! To be me!
Tied to forces of infinite chi!
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Note: Poem composed from the words in a Scrabble game.-
How many points were scored?
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Keeping Company with the Moon
Watercolor moon hesitates in sky,
face streaked in cloudy purple brush stroke bands,
though decorative, she can't make social plans,
owns no boon companions I can see.
I've learned she edges from us like shy child,
mere inches only in each swooping year,
I fear this faint reluctance to adhere,
demonstrates a nature unreconciled.
I'd like to coax moon home from firmament,
invite her to roll lissome down my hall,
but there Luna would scarcely be content,
and then again, my house is much too small.
Instead I'll go outside, put up my tent,
peek through flap, keep company as she falls.
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Lauri Burke © 2019
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From Tales from the Button Drawer: Harold the Button
Harold was a large ivory button, a singleton, who lived in a button drawer with his many friends.
Most were small families plucked from worn out sweaters, party dresses and outgrown coats whose
fabrics had gone on to make up quilts and socks stored upstairs in the tall closets and dressers of the
second floor. Harold’s companions ranged in size from tiny mother of pearl creations to a set of
great, curved horn buttons who once strained mightily to fasten a woolen coat of loden green.
Though the horn family liked to toot of days gone by, hunting in the deep woods with Grandpa
Swenson, all such adventures were long in their past.
The pearl sisters, in turn, were always eager to talk about the high tea Grandma Swenson once put
on for the elite of the neighborhood. They saw it all, in great detail, from their perch on her
necked, ruffled dress. Even the shoe buttons were full of themselves, having covered a great - high
deal of ground in their time.
Harold, sad to say, came from the button shop one hole short, he had only three when he should
have had four for thread to enter and secure. Yet, being made of ivory, in those frugal times, he
wasn’t thrown away, simply tossed into the button drawer, there to stay, and stay... and stay.
It was hard to have to listen for so many years to the adventures of others, and have none to
share in return.
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Oh My Heads...
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Click title to download PDF microchap
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N’er a Pair to Wear
Like cards, reading glasses need to shuffle,
craving to migrate toward brethren and shoal,
lone ones sometimes surface, rare as atolls,
rising in change bowls, bent and kerfluffled.
Deadly cheap, each is easily sundered
losing lenses so you're blind as a mole.
De rigueur to buy dozens, filling that hole,
then pile more still--plastic heaps of plunder.
With such riches, why is there never a hunch
where intact pair can be found with two bows?
And when one wants to read a bit at lunch,
their hide and seek makes agita wax bold.
Worst is when you hear soft insectile crunch,
and find you've crushed your favorites with one blow.
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Grief Dream
In my dreams your house has so many rooms,
air ripens in them thickly black as loam,
folding, they fit tight between door and stair,
I’ve stooped and crouched low to follow you there.
You flicker quiet in my corner eye,
just here where past and time lie right beside
labyrinths of loss my longing bestrides,,
I’ve wandered that maze since the day you died.
Do you call my name from your space between,
with a voice that floats and falls and keens?
I listen but cannot hear if you do
only susurrus of a sigh leaks through.
If I should call at your dark new address,
would you open the door for your old guest?
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Lauri Burke © 2013
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Why Did You Do It?
General, General, General Tso
why did you inflict your chicken
on generations inhabiting now,
indigestion following licking
of coated morsels on fire with chilis
loaded with garlic sauce sweet and sour
guarded by towers of broccoli
armed with gaseous propulsive power?
After consuming my stomach stories
bloating and gloating, making itself known
growling in martial oratory
gnashing acid so avidly downed.
It's 4 AM as I sit and curse you,
sipping ginger ale to disemburse you.
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Talking Back To Tales
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Sonnets Inspired by Fairy Tales:
Jack and the Beanstalk
Audio Version
read by Lauri Burke
Listen to the audio poem
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Ruffled Feathers
As a hen who lays eggs of purest gold,
my high value is indisputable,
yet the cur who now holds me, truth be told,
is a dim young bird brain unsuitable.
Prattlers paint him hero of the tale,
bold and adventuresome beanstalk climber;
I know the snatcher is beyond the pale,
light-fingered thief and sneaking two-timer!
Cad slid into my master's house one day,
to do some peeping, skulking and robbing,
then stole that great man's livelihood away,
leaving he and my good mistress sobbing.
Yes, I'm bitter, of honor I've been bled,
think I'll skip gold, start laying eggs of lead.
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Lauri Burke © 2009
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Vindicated
Grass hummock makes a pleasant oasis,
while sun sheds its weight in heavy gold,
curds and whey soothe one into soft stasis,
heat-steeped noon hour, all unconscious, unfolds;
from whence rises this chill intimation,
under bowl of brass-blue bannered sky,
feeling of creeping intimidation,
stealthily, hellishly inching close by?
Idle talk carries wide in the village
paints me a lassie of cowardly case,
gossips dismiss true fright of foul pillage,
as home-spun daydreams without solid base.
So you see, even groaning fear's fell moan,
joy it will be, leading this beast to town!
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Moving On: 5 Sonnets In Time
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Audio Version
read by Lauri Burke
Listen to the audio poem |
MOVING ON
Everything is mutable each thing
has its time, milkweed forming pods that strew
seeds parachuting on silken strings
old log built fence kneels down to fall in two
vines close embrace splintered wood as they do
foliage turns yellow as lowered sun
like bittersweet before orange bursts through
bees visit beach roses while blooms still yawn
shoals of fish jump to break water's calm
visiting air to slice gnats in their flight
while swan ducks head down into their realm
urgent in motion as season sheds light.
Each day fans its way to dissolution,
knows nothing can hold back evolution.
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Lauri Burke © 2009
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HANAMI (FLOWER VIEWING)
Watch for maize tulips to melt like butter,
as paddles fall asunder and settle,
May has moved to cost them the battle,
now they swing in breeze's soft-toned mutter.
Just before, they stood yellow-fleshed like corn,
their centers black-powdered as munitions,
wafting clouds of pollened invitations
to bees bumbling humble, freshly born.
Standing now, orchestra batons full ripe,
leading kited blossoms visual sound
of raining slant and drifting pouring pipe,
piling in confetti-papered mounds;
drama crescendos higher into hype,
while all bloomed stunning beauty runs to ground.
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Lauri Burke grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. She worked the better part of 40 years at the Barrington Public Library in Barrington, RI, where she had the great pleasure of continuing her education in the arts and humanities through her work designing and implementing cultural programming. 
