Janet Buck: Poem
UNDER ALL THOSE THUNDERHEADS
I light a candle at my desk,
searching proper mourning words.
They all escape my sandpaper tongue
grinding at relentless grief.
You were loved by many women,
smitten by your teasing eyes,
and tender ways with blooming flowers.
Florence held you like a son.
If she were here, she'd be
on knees beside your grave.
Admonishing. Reminding you
to see a doctor for your heart
the way you bent and kissed her hand.
I'm thinking now as silence looms.
Presence is a fragile thing
wind removes at brittle whim.
No cashmere tears will calm
the wool of losing you.
I pull my husband close to me.
Run my fingers on his chest
like syllables in sentences
I'll save before they vaporize.
I'll kiss his lips of lavender,
rub his forehead with my thumbs,
cherish seasons as they are
before the blindness intervenes.
Copper pennies of the sunlight
adding up to dollar bills.
A body is a stack of hay.
We live beneath those thunderheads.
Umbrellas of unspoken love
are nails in a hole for screws.
Janet Buck's has appeared in Gravity, The Doomed City, A Writer's Choice, The Melic Review, The Pittsburgh
Quarterly, Kimera, The Rose & Thorn, 2River View, Southern Ocean Review, Urban Spaghetti, Perihelion, and Mind
Fire among hundreds of others. Two of her poems have been nominated for the next Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her
most recent collection is Calamity's Quilt.
