The Wound

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

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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Sirocco