Seashell

(For Don Baker)

Sometimes, if only to sit silent,
I read your work
at work
in the clutter of my desk.

Your words like mirrors
sometimes explode in the light
as if white birds
had suddenly jumped rainbow-hued

or as if streaked gulls,
thick after garbage on the mall
were to burn like coal.

I laugh at myself for this image,
but I do recall
years ago when I first heard you read
you described a scar
you received from the edge of a shell
that you said was white.  

The scar it left was also white,
narcissistic words on white paper!

Then these words appear
once more in a published poem.

The weave of words,
tugged and pulled in their patterned existence,
forms a kind of towel
you and I seem to wrap around wounds,

those ancient wounds
that bleed and bleed over years
and keep us wrapping.

Somewhere I've heard
hemophiliacs are purveyors
of wisdom.

Red truth seeps through.
Somehow it hurts
to use poems as a kind of bandage.

What I sought was cures.