Home

Issues

Contributors

Submissions

Contact

Links

Take Action

PoetryDepot

  
 

Ioanna Warwick

---

 

Scars
 

I felt indecent, coming to you
with so many scars

the permanent necklace
around my throat;
the scar at my lip,
that kiss gone wrong;
burn shadows on my back,
and the secret hidden slash -

and the worst, invisible,
starting where memory starts.

Then we saw the giant sequoias
carrying their two thousand years,
every one scarred by fire:
centuries of charred flesh.
Fallen logs spelled
the storm of roots
that holds these trees in the earth.

In the morning I found you
hugging a sequoia,
tendrils of your hair
sunlit against the reddish bark.
On the tree's other side,
a burn like a salute,
hollowed and black -
and yet the crown
rising into green.

We walked among the sequoias,
one after another
split to the root by lightning -
each scar was an entrance,
each said in black silence

passion is not fire,
but surviving fire.
 
 
 
 

Copyright Ioanna Warwick 2004. All rights reserved.
 
 

Back to Ioanna Warwick Poems

 

 sign up for Abalone Moon's Newsletter

  
 

 

Thanks to Peter Bunce of  Techsolutions for his help with computer related issues!