an injury

I have discovered I am trailing blood

and walk to the garden to water what I find.

Healing, perhaps, is a hopeful dream.

Those injuries one finds -one may lick, and sorrow over

but as in the parable of the wagon,

the blood is not the injury,

nor the exposed muscle the injury

nor the uninjured skin at edge the injury

and often I imagine the cause

but the imagining is not the injury

and the flowers can not drink my memory

even if I pour it over them in words or tears

the scab is not the injury

nor any pain the injury

nor the dull pleasure of the suffering, the injury.

still, the planted rows, and the unplanted weeds, and the creeping grasses

drink what blood they can

and grow if they are wont to grow.