Scar
All bear them as badges of life.
Each marks a wound and then a healing.
Like most of life, good growing out of the bad,
producing proud new flesh to cover the inevitable
that we all face––the cut, the gore, the severing.
Life is arranged for some reason to complete
pain with healing, one way or the other.
Proud flesh, proud heart–an excess
in us all that needs smoothing.
First pain and then succor,
a generation dying and
another one growing.
Forever scarring
the family or
healing
it.
For the past year, I keep getting these heart-shaped wounds on my arm. I think they are from the dogs jumping up on me or from wounds won trimming the bougainvillea, but it is amazing how many times they are in a heart shape. I’d already written this poem before I decided to try to make a concrete poem out of it. As I progressed, it wanted to be a heart.
Yes, I know there are two copies of the poem in the Reader. The first is a photograph and the second was actually created on my WordPress blog page. I’m testing whether the form will stay or vanish in the reader or on my blog. Today it seemed to be staying, but it looks like the Reader is still transforming the heart and sticking it to the left margin. Luckily, for some reason it is still publishing the photo that I ended up taking off the blog. Ah the mysteries of The Reader!!
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Beautiful.
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Loved it, the text and the heart.
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The poem itself is inspiring but putting in the shape of a heart was perfect. Such a lovely, warm, and hopeful poem. So glad you pulled it out and shared it with us. 🙂
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Thanks, LuAnne… But I just wrote it today…
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You’re really getting into the poetry as art and art as poetry thing. Good poetry and fun visuals.
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Thanks, Marilyn.
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Pingback: Reblog: Scar | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Nicely done
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If we’ve been alive for very long, we all have them for sure. I like this shape poem. Thanks
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In La Manzanilla now, Leslie..
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Wishing I were there too. Say hi to Gloria.
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I will. She’s arriving tomorrow.
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