TPQ OnLine
poetry by Janet Buck

The Totaled Farm Motion's blessing disappeared. The trees were gone like ghosts that someone tapped too hard. Wrathful grapes in puddles where a pasture slept. Dry, dry twigs like dregs of Lipton's Onion Soup in envelopes of nature torn. All was couched in noise of progress promised like a dozen roses. Steeples of a haystack once, the metal bombed and then removed. The "Displaced Person" wasn't people; it was seeds of cheerful flowers. All the "trumpeters of Spring" were fallen soldiers in a bunker. The totaled farm was painted over by a tar and gravel road. Blue Jays crying acid tears. All the bounty clouds had kissed had turned to boards upon a truck. These were blessings once removed. Clipped by urban scissors rusted. Justice only showed its face when they were cleaning up the mess. Sticky treads of caterpillars almost drowning in the mud.

Janet Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her essays and poetry have appeared in The Recursive Angel, The Melic Review, Conspire, Gravity, Poetry Motel, New Thought Journal, The Artful Mind, Medicinal Purposes, Mind Fire, 2Rivers View, Allegory, Kimera, The Oracular Tree, Green Cross, Moonshade Magazine, The Poet's Edge, Ariga, Seeker, Asylem, Woven Soles, The Free Cuisinart, Pif, The Waterloo Review, Illya's Honey, Fires of Autumn, Ygdrasil, Ascent, Indie Journal, Orbital Revolution, Flaming Flag, Calliope, In Motion, Idling, Poetfest, Sapphire Magazine, Southern Ocean Review, The Rose & Thorn, Perihelion, Zen Rubies, Creative Ooze, The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks, to name but a few.

Janet's poetry sites on the web have received more than thirty awards. "Writing," she says, "is a tuba in a long parade that chases pain and sorrow to its dissolution." For additional comments, email her at jbuck22874@aol.com.

Page posted 9/98