White Linen

White Linen


The sheets were folded perfectly
like napkins on a table-top.
Pain would be another
absolutely uninvited guest.
One that stayed when all the smiles
turned and left. Absorbing strength.
Slicing courage to the quick.
Being there was oxygen that gave
her heart a way to breathe.
He knew he had to stay.

The cattle drive of helplessness.
Futile tongues that merely wagged
and couldn’t lick the ache away.
Joints like rusted engine parts
that only felt the twist and shout
of looking for the sun.
She seemed so far away at times.
Smothered by the truth of bones
that snapped like crayons just because.

Sharing pain is wearing it.
They didn’t have to speak.
Words were spray from gravel roads or
cotton balls to incubate the tender ears
from howling winds and knobs of fear
that rattled on misfortune’s door.
In his eyes she heard him scream:
“White linen should be clean
and fresh and new and bright.
Not the walls of prison cells
that staple wings of butterflies
to wrinkled pages of the night
and never let them soar.”


Artichokes All the years of pressure cookers
rocking on the stove.
My belly full of finding ways
to dance around your piercing eyes
that rested like a robin’s eggs
on fences leaning in the dawn.
Moments split like stale nuts
your daughters always gathered up
and tried so very hard to save.
The cookie dough we made from scratch
your mouth would burn when
something wasn’t done your way.

Anger wasn’t dialogue
or teeter totters working hard.
The back and forth of sanding down
the lonely nights we spent
together in our bed.
Back to very bitter back
like bookends on a naked shelf.
Nothing there to hold our dreams
like photos with a broken frame.

Artichokes and arguments.
Love and steaks were never right.
I trimmed the thorns and
cooked the leaves in bitter wine
until my life was mush.
And when the green of little girls
was hauled away like
wrecks of cars beside the road,
I threw the leaves in garbage cans.
I had to save my soul.


Mockingbirds The lullaby of tragedy.
The mockingbird of
letting all the anger out.
Mooning all the syllables
I thought I couldn’t wander near.
Scratches on a missing knee.
The cake I thought would never rise.
Without the stoic eggs I stored
in cartons of my soul.

Coffee mugs of all the times
you listened like the open sky.
Held the heavy lids
on coffins of my broken dreams
so I could look inside.
Let me kick a moment’s ice
across our kitchen floor.
Took the mop of loving arms
and laid it on my swollen eyes
like sympathetic bags of tea
and mats beside the shower door.

Knowing just how hard it was
to wipe the feet I didn’t have.
To take the hose of faith
and fill the bucket all alone.
Just how hard it had to be
without the muscles of your heart
to stir the sands of bitter words
and push them out to sea.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga