Only Wounds Can Be Healed

author’s note:

The right title can be hard to find and sometimes I don‘t find it.  But I especially like the title for this poem.


ONLY WOUNDS CAN BE HEALED

That woman in my dreams--

with her arm amputated
just below the elbow--

is she wounded or healed?

Her cut has finally
stopped bleeding, leaving
a trail of blood.
But what good can come
from following back
to the source?

What can she learn
by returning
to the buzz saw--?--

she already knows
that angry teeth
rip.

But maybe
in tracing her way
she’ll realize her work--her work
is to look, to listen,
to look beyond and below,
to listen beyond and below,
to explore dark corners,
to swallow as much
as she can possibly digest
so as to grow--to grow
is her work.

I have taken
the two of us
to the forest,
to the variety of trees.
I tell her: see here--
             so many arms,
             many of them
             broken off
             but many more
             in full spread--

look how those trees live
with all their broken arms
yet still remain strong.

And how about green lizard--?--
laughing at the world
by growing back his tail.

But she doesn’t need me
to tell her
what little I’ve learned--

after all,
she bandaged the arm
on her own.

© 2010, Michael R. Patton

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