https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
A journal for poetry, criticism, reviews, stories and essays published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998
"Peacock Plumes," in loving memory of Elisha Porat, by Janet I. Buck
The yolki flower shall never be the same again
without your eyes to pen its shape and color poised
against the smoke of rifle fire.
Your words were flashlights in the dark.
Those dreams of peace rose and fell
like seals climbing slippery rocks
for bites of food, or maybe just to feel the sun
above relentless ocean waves.
You prayed for hatred and war to lift
like the harshest of winters sitting on Spring.
I saw you as a stunning peacock,
capable of shrieking screams
when it came to voicing poignant grief.
Yet plumes of stanzas from your hands
turned hazy clouds to cobalt skies.
You always woke me up with words,
to verdant hues of growing grass,
to gardens in the wilderness.
There's nothing like a peacock fan
to educate the nonchalant.
Author Bio: Janet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals worldwide. Janet's second print collection of poetry, Tickets to a Closing Play, was the winner of the 2002 Gival Press Poetry Award and her third collection, Beckoned By The Reckoning, was released by PoetWorks Press in the spring of 2004. Her most recent work has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine and Offcourse. In 2011, Buck was honored as a Featured Poet of the Editor's Circle in PoetryMagazine.com.