Counting Placemats

"Lust is grief that has turned over in bed
to look the other way."

      Donald Hall

This is how a poet explains
shaving the beard of loss
with a quick screw and a long shrug.
Living on -- when nothing grows
except a root that leads to past.
A lonely verse, an empty house
of extra rooms he needs
to fill with laughter and bones.
Dinner for two was the dream.
Dinner for one is the truth.
She'd beckon you to love again,
to oil the wok, to fry wild onions
and chard. She wouldn't 
want you stewing here 
like nuts that have no meat.

There is nothing the dead can say 
to lift the sinking chin
of what remains on stretching roads
as they point toward rattling ribs.
Her name is etched in every hour,
on all four posters of the bed.
Your heart will always be a cave
and she the torch that fizzled,
snuffed, and dropped from
reaching fingertips. 
Palettes stocked with brand new blood
won't bring your favorite portrait back.
Climax inside foreign thighs,
a second-place certificate.
But she would want you to dance.
Any ballet in the dust to crush 
the cherry burning your skin.

© Janet I. Buck

***First Published in Impetus, Spring 2003

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