Newcastle Island & the Irrelevance of Stars

Newcastle Island and the Irrelevance of Stars

Fireflies hover above the open canopy of our tent‒‒
Ah…they are only stars, not insects. They have no light for me.
Newcastle Island is dark, and smells of seawater and camp fires.
All that touches me is by my side—warm, breathing, dreaming.
The pinpoint holes in the heavens cannot light the colours below,
and my electric torch is more brilliant than any star, because it is ours.
The learned astronomers tell us galaxies are collapsing and exploding
but I feel more heat from your breath than those trillion stellar blazes  
Whitman told us he look’d up in perfect silence at the stars, and I
have been in awe before, but soon we will visit those endless continents
and dry our feet on their shores; for now, the barely glowing mortals
beneath the canvas are fragile as moonlight on the waves,
and will shine longer than the faint sparks above.  

by Garth von Buchholz
poetry contest winner, 2016

/GvB

Two new works to be published in The Sirens Call (Summer 2020)

I’m pleased to share the news that two of my works, Zero Dark (fiction) and Where Are the Hands (poetry) will be included in the 50th edition of The Sirens Call this summer!

Another exciting reason to celebrate is that my daughter’s fine poem, Widow’s Weeping Crawl will also be included in the same issue.

/GvB

#sirenscallpublications #writing #poems #poetry #flashfiction #shortfiction #publishing #poets #darkpoetry #gothicliterature #Canadianwriters

Yours Are the Sweetest Lips

Yours are the sweetest lips I never kissed,
& I never heard a voice as wondrous
that was as far away and faint.

When I hold you in my arms
you are as weightless as air
& your skin is like nothing I have ever felt.

Each time our eyes meet, they are pixelated,
& our touch is a virtual sensation.
All your words to me are orbs of light and dark,
& my northern lights dance across your beautiful horizon.

Your love for me
is as whirling as the world beneath my feet

& my love for you
is as shimmering as the sunflowers in the heavens

& we are so intimate in our distance
that we make north fall in love with south

& crush continents together.

 

II

 

There is no distance in a kiss

Lips may emigrate to lands forbidden to souls

while hearts and minds afar gather behind borderlines,

reaching to one other—refugees longing to cross.

 

Our kisses nullify the distance like colliding stars

whose fires blend them into one blazing beacon,

turn their boundaries into light,

& then, only then, our love may feel

 

what our lips can only touch.

/GvB