https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/Recent content in Prose & Poetry on Charlie BuryHugo -- gohugo.ioen-gbhttps://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/lightning-poem/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/lightning-poem/In a blip, the sorrow courses from every inner stream, Flooding the spirit; A vice of light and pain where the self is crushed – ’Tis fallen nature’s interminable force. Yet inside the tabernacle of the mind A lightning bolt strikes the storm, Raging, quick, and mortal, It stings me into the posture of the deathbed-penitent; The raw stuff of the slaughter. My reason rendered dumb By the world’s many draughts numbed,https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/night-poem/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/night-poem/The night does not resist the end, It welcomes darkness as a friend. The truth creeps in beneath the door, A light we could not see before. The mists of chaos clear away, The dust that settled in the day; The mind no longer cast adrift Receives the silence as a gift. It finds its rhythm once again Beyond the worry and the pain: Secure, deliberate, and deep, A slow peace found within the sleep.https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/shes-not-the-one-short-story/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/shes-not-the-one-short-story/Lili said yes. She’d go out with me. I knew she was intermittently seeing someone else – some polished tech type – but I told myself there was no harm in trying. Humans, as I’ve observed, aren’t big on caution when it comes to these things. It’s all just go for it. So, I went for it. Even if the so-called rules of dating felt as clear and comprehensible as contemporary art.https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/that-strange-act-of-writing-poem/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/that-strange-act-of-writing-poem/I do not know what to do with this grief, So I put pen to paper – That strange, ancient act of communicating with oneself, A tether when the mind reels, Drawn in by a sadness not vast, but intense, Specific as a face I can no longer touch. How fortunate is the one who writes, For when the world offers no distraction And the silence is too loud with absence,https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/virgin-in-the-meadow-poem/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://www.charliebury.com/prose-poetry/virgin-in-the-meadow-poem/I thought I saw the Virgin in a tree. Perched halfway up in prayer and tunica, Head bowed, she balanced on the thick stem of a branch Where the verdure was ample and lush. Beneath her mantle was a woad-blue, not quite brown, Her face resting in light shadow. The tree at the end of the vast meadow stood totally still, Stark and skeletal in late May. A field of daffodils lay between us,