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| Soliloquy to Bitter Sky |
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|by Janet I. Buck
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"I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years
and have hardly made a rent in it."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
I drop on tea cup knee at the lip of your grave,
its stone and sand, its vacancy,
amid sharp emerald blades of grass.
My heart these days, a lost screw
looking for its proper hole.
What bend should rivers fist and take?
Mother whom I've never known --
speak like suns through mucus under puffy lids.
The fingers of my tears are sore
from running up and down the keys.
You are gone, but Father is alive and here,
pacing tunnels of his grief,
hugging like he's swatting flies,
loving from behind thick doors
with dead bolts set above the knobs
my sweating palms have tried to turn.
A part of me is longing to retort to rock,
gather chisels, hone a love
without a dead museum chill.
Soliloquies are lonely forms;
paper burns to whiskey's torch.
A listen wreath is all I ask.
Each time I pour, each time I serve
another meal, I water flowers
shrinking in their chosen paths.
My tarnished temples,
lathered in their silver streaks,
curl themselves around his ear,
beg for conches of the sea
to leave a pearl beside the shrugs.
Our instruments have drying reeds.
Moments seem like ash to tap,
sequins falling from a dress.
In dreams, I wrote a different score.
Soon these seeds will ride the wind.
Task of music sits before this orchestra.
Hours grow late around this waste.
by Janet I. Buck
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