Prongs and Jewels

Prongs & Jewels

We are at that age where
champagne flutes our bodies were
are slivered glass and gray remains.
Years have stolen sonnets some,
left us in a smarter class,
blackboards grazed by fingernails.
A pier we hope will grow some moss
and blanket every pebble lodged.
This lunch about a woman's death,
how Cancer ate her organs
in a carnivorous swirl,
but a musical score stayed scribbled
there which drew you to the mass
and match of winded candles flickering.
How crazy illness made her hands,
grabbing every dress and shoe,
each skirt and sock, a layer's fading memory
to try on once before she died.
A polyester cotton gin on closet floors,
a weak mutation of this dark you had
the strength to chisel
with a warm embrace.
Just knowing you were there at night
was moving heavy furniture.

This lunch about your love for her
that puts your tears in slot machines;
all that flowed through rivers
of elastic arms stretched to meet
a bloated waist of
someone else's suffering.
Fluffing pillows, punching them
behind her back, pretending you
weren't losing steam like irons
God unplugs from walls.
That all your cords were working ones.
Lining up necessities -- these ducks
this day of pain would shoot.
Returning hope to mantles falling
in the fire;
their dust a measure of the sea.
You have lost a lot of weight
but do not know
dimensions of a scurvy heart.
Lesser women would have picked a silk
excusing scarf or two,
sported plastic jewelry,
ignoring sapphires of the bleak
that lend white moons their ivory.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Poetry Magazine