Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Laying of Hands

digital art: ralph murre


The Laying of Hands
by Stephen Anderson         
        
After the cutting,
After the slide under the microscope,
The herringbone stitches to the open flesh come

In a dutiful, meticulous sewing
Of the cancer-vacated crater in my temple,
Hybrid birth-child now of Nature and surgeon’s handiwork

Setting as right as possible all that had gone
So terribly wrong in a matter of mere decades,
Now hand-stitched and shiny like a fine, leather shoe.



~ first published in The Foundling Review