Dear Scar
You’re effortful proud flesh
the color of galvanized roofing
piled in the basement
by the custodian and left
to rust in foul water.
Remember the lit bed,
wall of lights, quick feet
pounding toward me?
Dear oddity, I praise
your ugliness, your stumpy
hitch and itchy drag. You
were cooked in a crucible,
your stitchery split and discarded.
You’re a map of a coast
that sinks as flood waters rise.
Your itch might be healing.
Or a new warning, shadow
dropped through blazing day,
wind rocking trees and
rivering leaves over asphalt.
I want you to fade to an ink trail,
night coming blue-black,
the great oak a father
extending his wounded arm.
*
Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Lake Effect, Cleaver, Faultline, Small Orange, Meridian, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
