Scars, and: American Camp, San Juan Island, and: Skylark, 1953

Scars

He touches a leathery slither of tissue
crossing her sole from heel to ball:
late spring, she thinks, maybe 1996.
A pair of lumps that were benign
growths tangled in a net of nerves.
She remembers bright lights, cold air
in the operating room. Brahms cello
sonatas playing low on the surgeon's
tape deck as she moved into twilight
sleep. Those melodies ruined for her,
void of feeling now like her great toe
where the scalpel slipped. She turns
and touches burnt skin still holding
onto flame in the small oblong pit
where his thumb and wrist meet:
1976, he thinks, a winter lingering
through ice storms in early May.
He remembers the shock that hot
coffee grounds could do such harm.
Wrapped in gauze, his burnt wrist
on the wheel caught light that drew
him through miles of prairie crosswinds.
He tells her of shorn trees on a glazed
midwest interstate, cornfields covered
in bristles of glassy green as he drove
straight toward the sparkling horizon.

He runs that wrist over a jagged bolt
on her hip. She notices the florid pucker
in his upper chest, feels a spur of rib,
a catch in his breath as he kisses the pale
sickle on her neck. Fish hook, she thinks,
closing her eyes, remembering a swollen
river, wind awhirl where canyon walls
were sheer. Her brother crooned
on a rocky bank as his backcast began.
She walked near enough to hear his song,
which she hums now and knows it must
have been 1959, the autumn of "Mr. Blue."
The old tune as it moves beneath her flesh
touches his lips and he smiles, closing his eyes.

American Camp, San Juan Island

Word spreads that all three eaglets seem ready
to soar. We watch one flap at the nest's rim
and settle again. The mother's steady
gaze gives nothing away, but she wants him

to rise, that much is clear, and she is not
going anywhere until he does. June
mornings here should not be so still or hot,
the young deserving spring breeze and skies strewn

with high clouds for their first flight. Fledging done,
and the great basket of their nest growing
smaller by the day, and summer light come
early, and a crowd of tourists showing

up: soon there is another brawl of wings.
This time his talons clear the nest before
he drops again and his soft chitter rings
down like a feather to the forest floor.

Skylark, 1953

Double-parked on Linden Boulevard,
father's gleaming Skylark shuddered
and rumbled as it waited for mother
to reappear. Someone in that house
had died in the night. Open to summer
sun, the car gathered all the heat from
the universe. Father's head tilted back.
Ash balanced on the tip of his cigar flared
with each breath. From the backseat,
I watched scraps of newspaper soar
from the gutter like a flock of birds
brushing the hood. They passed over
my head and vanished. As father sang
to the melody on the radio, the flow
of music was shattered by static.
When the song ended, he reached out
to flick a switch and the hidden top closed,
blocking the sun. The car filled with smoke
and heat, settling itself against the anger
of blocked traffic. I watched the house,
then the clouds and sky begin to blur.