Poems
Small signs and scars
by Gillian Harding-Russell
His concern was not comforting
unwrinkling waves under numb glass so that
I cried like someone on the other side.
He dropped the reflecting disc on my knee
unprofessionally, taken aback; but not
everything means anything.
The next doctor examined my eye
as biological flesh with geographical lines,
each subterranean eruption amid the shifting plates of the world
now under the microscope each scar and
abnormality an insignia recording a lifetime
of small disasters.
This poem originally appeared in Canadian Literature #172 (Spring 2002), Auto / biography. (pg. 144)
