Our scars will be singing (revised)

April 29th since I last posted here. I'm mildly surprised. I've been laboring under the impression that I'm much busier than that, but I suppose there's too points about which I ought to be more mindful. 

One, I've been writing by hand, and not necessarily bringing anything to a conclusion. In fact, I've also written three letters to Julie and Dale and Emily Udell, each of them some 6,7, 8 pages long. In the process, I've transcribed the poems of others--Juan Felipe Herrera, Marge Piercy and a couple other people whose names (and poems) slip my mind. But the act of just writing, pencil and paper, resonates for me. I feel busy and accomplished even though it seems so difficult to measure what has happened. And then to stick the completed letters in an envelope and mail them off without much hope or recovery, certainly nothing so rigorous as follow up, seems like a completed process, no matter how evanescent. So, without anything particular to show for it, I've felt productive.

And, two, though I've been planning to write a particular set of essays (which I have not yet begun) and have noodled them around quite a lot, I have been writing and revising a few poems, one of which turns out to be the last poem I posted on Outdoor Poetry Season. It is hugely revised. In many ways a different poem, but as always, when I move from one version to the next, I usually quite like what has developed.

Our scars will be singing

Our scars

textured and smooth,

where we rubbed on the world

soon, fast and hard.

Our scars,

murmur and tense,

ride free on our muscle, ride far on our nerve.

Our scars, bitter at silence,

indignant, rehearsing our rage.

Innocent before the build up of wounds,

upright before we first staggered,

before we stumbled again

and again,

worthy as heroes, unsubtle, intrepid,

learning like warriors,

pretending no fear,

learning to sing no matter who hears.

Our song of ourselves, of not wearing away,

of not crouching down, of not slinking off,

running and jumping and bounding down hills,

shouting and clapping and dancing in streets,

this is my heart and I share it with you.