Gravity Issue 24 - Janet Buck

Janet Buck

A Treasure’s Base

Gratitude was always there
like threads on oriental rugs.
To watch you open gifts--
a gift beyond all others wrapped
in glitter, ribbons, velvet bows.
Your thumbs wore every sign of time.
Ballerinas pirouetting in a slipper
turned to dry baguettes in bed.
As you crumbled, I would sweep.
When I read you sonnets in a hurry,
life stopped cold; you winced in pain.
I knew I’d sinned.

You couldn’t see my needlepoints,
but eyes were not the issue here.
Eclectic taste reigned, rained hard:
the old clay pots slept at peace
on the polished mahogany--
appraisal wasn’t done in dollars.
Egg-salad with dill and celery stalks,
cross-wise sliced for elegance,
10,000 calories of mayonnaise and salt--
three leagues beyond their caviar.

Red lipstick in your purse melted like
crayons bleeding in the August sun.
We were, after all, planting tulips.
Busy with the life of the earth.
Mirrors mattered little these days.
Those rugs, that art, belonged
with you in immortal tombs,
for you both had the power
of intuiting a treasure’s base.

Janet Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level and has published poetry in a wide variety of e-zines, journals, and anthologies. "Introspection's porcupine is an odd creature that comes in every shape and size. The tangled roots of mine are whetted by the rains of being born disabled. I have spent most of my life using stoic pride to squeeze what toes I had and didn't have into the brutal shoe of normalcy. Poetry, for me, is a tuba in a long parade that chases sorrow and pain to its dissolution.