How can I write you a letter of hope
when your eyes are jaded by pot
and pills, any seed to get you high
when life is just plain low,
when suns don't shine except to burn,
when gardens wear nothing but dirt.
What if I said I rode that dizzy Ferris wheel,
afraid of the dark, afraid of the wind,
afraid of those islands of truth
where journeys are singular jails.

What if I said I envied
the Brady Brunch lives of my friends
with children on skates,
of mothers stretched thin
between their lucid, glowing joys.
What if I said I used a cork
for fifteen wasted years
as tongue depressors of the night.
What if I said the darker the dance,
the brighter the light when you see.
 

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about the author:
Janet Buck is a six-time Pushcart Nominee. Her poetry has recently appeared in Octavo, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, CrossConnect, The Montserrat Review, Offcourse, The Pedestal Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, Facets Magazine, and hundreds of journals worldwide. Janet's third print collection, Beckoned by the Reckoning, is now available from PoetWorks Press.
E-mail: jbuck22874 (at) aol (dot) com
Websites: http://members.aol.com/jbuck22874/whatsnew.html and http://www.janetbuck.com.  

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