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| Beached Whales |
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|by Janet I. Buck
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Your portrait hangs on trees of grief
father refuses to shake.
We don't like red ants
that crawl from fallen cones.
His ice-cube eyes such challenges
for tiny picks of question marks;
our seasons clipped by slamming doors.
A poem sticks its cherub finger in the jam,
the curious caught, then beached like whales.
Your memory -- a blur of burrs
that could be eagles,
wing spans knifing winter air.
I want to ask if clothes you wore
were caftans over miracles.
In lieu I play this guessing gale
this ouiji board, this slick syllabic fantasy.
Marinate his languishing in 80 proof
until defenses drop their guards
and I can grab a fishing pole, ask
(well beg) these oceans of our silent years
to bleed upon a linen page.
I like to dream your waxen tongue
in candleabras of a smile.
Make you into perfect wicks
that never cowered to the flame.
A hand that yanked at woolen curtains
drawn across my father's eyes,
turned them bulging choir robes.
Longing wells are deep and dark;
you tap me with imaginings --
show yourself, a cat in cradles of a grave,
stroking its stone with heartbeat and spine.
In sonnets of the unexplained,
you dance on the moon's white cup,
your lipstick gracing porcelain.
He crumbles in remembering,
so I leave our mountains alone.
Buddhas of this precious jade,
this unwalked grass which might
have grown in touch with light.
by Janet I. Buck |
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