Issue 12
Only
Janet I. Buck
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If Only
A hospital chart blames
cancer for this vacancy --
this diary that has no words.
Of course I've made you a goddess
cloaked in shimmering white.
Athena in her Parthenon
while I was fumbling stray stones.
Angel with an eagle's width
ardent enough to split gray clouds.
When nests are empty straw,
a child searches sky and earth
for semaphores of missing birds.
One feather of a memory is all I ask.
One signature to study for its fatal curve
that made my father love you so
he couldn't learn to speak again.
This -- our mother/daughter doom,
your grave, my longing's gravity.
Our doors with knobs of polished brass
forever bolted from the light.
Oasis and mirage with thorns
of fingers I have never touched.
Show me just one lipstick mark,
one footprint in the dizzy sand,
and I will write from there toward joy.
If only is a phrase that bleeds
on every snowy page.
Iambic chants, ibids of wish,
sweaters with holes and no arms,
moths of a quill with nothing to chew.
This concert needs some instrument.
~Janet I. Buck
Janet I. Buck is a six-time Pushcart nominee. Her second print collection of
poetry, Tickets to a Closing Play, won The 2002 Gival Press Poetry
Award and will be released in October. Email.
© 2003 by Janet I. Buck. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.