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JANET I. BUCK
Lacerated Innocence
I shouldn't, I knew, have left my bed,
but nurses seemed preoccupied
with passing out those paper cups
of little missile bible strokes,
assuaging ways pain's plate had cracked.
Hope and curiosity grow faster
than summer weeds in tender grass
of moistened youth.
I was bored with my dolls
and missed my friends,
wandered off as children do.
I wondered if the rain
was falling where I lived.
If my brothers were cutting off
the orange hair of my favorite trolls.
Who got corners on the birthday cake.
Home was a gift I wanted to open
with hearty arms no matter
what sensible seasons said.
The burn ward--etching carved in stone.
Lapis chunks of sky-blue eyes
would gain their sense of history.
Forty years have passed and still
I see its haunting walls so well.
Spiders of flesh in rotted strands.
Bubbles of white in chalk disease.
A boiled tryst of discontent.
Piercing screams of infancy
where justice has no slot to fill.
My lacerated innocence was fighting
to regain its parts. Doctors seemed like
ministers that stood between the pews and death.
They galvanized humanity--
held magic canes of stethoscopes
and charts which they could open, close
like windows when a storm moves in.
Leaving prayer and paradigm
behind in scents of lavender.
Copyright JANET I. BUCK
(all rights reserved; To copy this poem, please contact the poet)
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