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DappledThings.org

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The Wound

Dappled Things

Geoffrey Smagacz

The wound, I wish I didn’t have the wound,
manifesting like a burl on a tree.
As I have grown, it seems to have ballooned,
To me as broad as the leafed canopy.
My friend, it’s not an easy thing to hide,
but I know you, and how polite you are,
that even if I opened my inside
you’d pronounce me normal, but from afar.
But I’m not. And one day the weight of snow,
a soaking rain, or a strong gale-force blast,
or one feather more in a nest, or moon glow
will, at the hurt, defeat the tree at last.
And yet these misshapen outgrowths are prized
by craftsmen, sanded, shined and emphasized.

 

Geoffrey Smagacz is the author of A Waste of Shame and Other Sad Tales of the Appalachian Foothills, published by Wiseblood Press. The book won the 2014 Independent Publisher gold medal for Mid-Atlantic Best Regional Fiction. Several of Smagacz’s poems, as well as a short story, have previously appeared in Dappled Things.

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Filed Under: Poetry, SS. Peter and Paul 2017

Comments

  1. AvatarBelle says

    September 11, 2017 at 4:11 am

    Beautiful, poignant, even wrenching poem. I love the last couplet especially. I’m ever amazed by the wonderful uses to which the sonnet can be adapted, how well-suited it is to contemporary language. Mr. Smagacz has used it in a way which feels fresh and natural. A memorable poem.

Mary, Queen of Angels 2020

Purchase Featuring nonfiction from Joshua Hren, fiction from Jennifer Marie Donahue and Rob Davidson and the winners and honorees of the Bakhita Prize in Visual Arts.

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