Janet Buck: poem

APPLE BOBBING

It is the age when moons
slip into lakes like tarnished dimes
through pocket seams.
Where bone boats rock
and teetering, a coin of breath,
lives inching toward a waterfall.
Thinking, cleaning out old drawers,
digs up junctions, gangly roots.
Bobbing for apples, memory,
sliding down a question mark.
"My sons," you say,
"were brought up right."
As if you're shining flashlights
in the orbs of wish,
plowing like a motel maid
through someone else's messy room.

They are there and you are here.
Your lives divided by a state
but not just plain geography.
Flesh is a map to smooth and read;
money just won't wait on tears.
You call me in the grip of booze
and wander through the muddy maze.
Pointing fingers everywhere
as if the past is just a picture
fingers can't decide to hang.
Depth grows into larger holes;
amour's abyss cannot be filled
by pills and wine and fine hotels.
These draperies you chose to hitch
are slipping socks and diapers
it's too late to change.
Sunrise pinches like tight shoes.
Our footprints match a dollar bill.

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 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her most recent collection is Calamity's Quilt.