little scar

XXIV

one:

I like that thought: that the dark knows

how tall we are, how small we are,

if we shake in it or if we become  in it.

We are marked here, aren’t we?  And

whatever happens there, the scars are the echo

of our departure, a long, long hum, pulse.

I remember the dog that bit me.  Alone, this

poor mutt had likely been beaten

before he came to be tied, houseless,

to our tree.  I saw the black-veined meat

of his gums, as if his opening jaw were on

slow cinema—before he sunk his teeth in my left

cheek, three inches from my eye. 

I was four.  My daughter’s age now.

A piece of him is still there, resting

on my jaw-bone, or in the ball

and socket of my jaw, slightly out of grind.

It sets me—this jaw, shaped by a little dog.

Later I would defend him—he wasn’t provoked,

he was just hungry.  Lonely.  Sad.  When

my father shot him, I wonder if his expression

was relief.  Standing there then, face to mouth

with my dog, was/is my first memory of dark-

ness and how much of it I could stand in

without crying out, dog, me, hanging on.

Yes, just the dog and me.  A hot August day…

somewhere, miles away, my father was cutting

hay.  Drinking beer.  That tractor, moving

in low groans, is like the dog, after I’m able

to pull away, who leaps one more time.  By then,

I’m on my face in the blurry grasses

and he reaches the end of his chain.  It vibrates

and sings.  Even today, thirty six years later,

when I hear a chain gone on force to its end, I smell

that dog, our spit and blood, the piles of his shit I fell in

getting away, the scar of our agreement left

and now a low stitched moon, or part of one…

two:

Baby, you will have a scar.  They’ll cut a thin line

of skin across  your abdomen, pull the flesh

open to peer at what’s not working in your dark.

But that will be later.  After ten days of surveillance

and tinctures of time, you were eating.

you were passing water.  And solids.

And they let you come home.  We had carried

your coming home clothes with us everywhere.

Soft, off-white fleece.  You looked like

a pillow I could lay my head down on, finally,

and sleep.  And pray, maybe, to some quiet god,

a gratitude, and to beg

for sufficient breasts

to feed your days and nights with the safety

of a warm fully belly.