The Wound
Such a pretty word for an ugly thing.
This open door where infection sings,
Summoning blood’s obscure devices:
Parties of platelets—each grabs and ices
The scarlet wave of oxygen’s breath,
The flow that fills up injured depths.
Then lymph lets go with its hungry hordes,
Ferocious armies in ghoulish accord
Surround and devour enemy germs.
The victorious body sets its terms
As a shallow scrape turns meat to mush
And strategic forces plunge in a rush
To repair our sundered boundaries
With rivets from cellular foundries.
A spider’s web is a clumsy mesh
Compared to workshops of the flesh:
These oozing arts, raw survival’s craft
Mending entropy fore and aft.
Elizabeth Hurst
If you have any thoughts about this
poem, Elizabeth Hurst
would like to hear them
