Old Cuts Leave Scars

10 Aug 2022

Jaybird
You didn’t know then
perhaps you never would 
that the small bits
of wounded flesh and soul
would bleed and be replaced
by scars
always tenuous
always on the cusp
of breaking open
and once again pouring red,
but last night
when the wind
was high in the trees
shaking them twisting them
and owls called to one another
from willow to oak
I died
and there was a clarity
of perspective as my soul
at first wandered
loosed from the leash
of the living before
ascending
          descending
                   vanishing.
As my spirit wafted through
my house
ignorant, no, disdainful
of locked doors or windows
I carried old pain
even as I bent and kissed
my sleeping wife
the sun around which I orbit
and felt the warmth of her
forehead on my cold lips,
and as I leaned to pat
my dog
fount of unbridled life and love
as her tail thrashed the floor
an ancient instrument
flogging wheat into flour,
and I stood and gazed upon
the world which had been
so important to me
computer eye glowing
papers piled in order just right
dictionaries and style guides
to life me up 
when my mind failed me.
But despite the richness
of this life revisited
all the while I still felt
the smallness of the child
being mocked
the callow young man
laughed at as he fumbled
with his first love’s dress
the poet-in-training
being admonished by family
that such scribbling
was a waste of time
in the world of the real.
Foolishness it was
to hold close such hurts
vampires that drained me
but now you know
when you see
through the unblinking eyes
of the dead.

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Jaybird

I am retired, having worked primarily as a librarian, but have done freelance proofreading, copy editing, and book reviewing. I wrote some poetry many years ago, but decided it was bad and stopped, since I had other things to do. For the last ten...

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