by Janet Butler
I dream a dream of summer
hot nights under deep skies
black skies, endless, starry streets
we walk together.
Hot nights, dark rooms, a gleam, perhaps,
of moonlight, a tongue of silver that tastes us
white flesh wet with love.
We lie, fingers touching,
sheets crumpled in mounds and valleys
shadow and light holding joy
in wells of darkness.
The warm Italian night murmurs.
Footsteps echo from cobbled streets.
A wind lifts and drifts
through open shutters as we sleep.
by Janet Butler
I wake and search deep night skies
looking for that distant red plant
churning her barren orbit,
mother of Mars now desolate,
her pale red sands emblem of life
that was.
We sense each other.
Her, dry, dusty, feeble, me, watching love die.
We exchange wan glances.
by Janet Butler
of all things that bloom
now or later, the seed planted, waiting,
roots that grab the underside of meaning,
batten on a simple Hi, how are you, the clichés of conversations
infused with meaning.
Us, meeting on purpose by chance in a local coffee shop
across from each other with glances that try to hold the casual, slip away
to joy.
by Janet Butler
live for today
and a piece of tomorrow
bright and shiny, a bauble iridescent
with a sheen of dreams.
Let me be pulled
to many morrows laid out like
longed-for cities, Paris, Rome, New York
backdrop of desire.
Le my last drink be blue skies
with a slice of fresh lemon sun,
let me stumble, drunk on life
over that twilight edge.
by Janet Butler
a gong strikes somewhere
vibrations rattle my heart
you thinking of me.
by Janet Butler
A May afternoon and music from the local Elks
pushes up against my shut windows, edges around corners,
seeps through cracks, and pulls me out to dance.
Eighteen again, I primp for Prom Night, a butterfly caged in my loins.
I pace in untested high heels, off-balance with the small-town glamour
of me, crude in brash colors, but beautiful I feel in their over-the-counter
glitz, permission granted to overdo tonight.
My date arrives in a slightly large rented tux, his eyes shy but happy.
He too feels romance in the air, as if this night were a road leading to
dreams come true, pulling forever forward – goodbye to life as we know it.
It’s Prom Night. We climb that stairway to the stars together.
Boston Poetry Magazine 