Two Contemporary Poets
Spring, 2004
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