NO LIFE BUT THIS: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.


It is biographical fiction based on the life of Emily Warren Roebling considered to be the first female field engineer and highly instrumental in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.


http://atbosh.com/authors/diane-vogel-ferri/

Monday, January 31, 2011

Scars (cicatrices)

There are scars where blood once bloomed
on bodies born pure, their stories live on.

A dog engraved his teeth marks on
Laurel, a girl I knew long ago,
leaving a concave spider web
splayed on her cheek.

As a child in a hospital ward
I saw a little boy's charred skin,
his outer layer like pieces of
red crumpled paper.

Metal forceps created
a crooked mark on my husband's
sweet newborn face,
still visible decades later.

My son's six year-old leg
collided with a bicycle pedal
that left a forever grin
stamped on his shin.

Dad's leg carries
a long scar from childhood
bone infection that took
a year of his boyhood away.

There is a diagonal slash
across Helen's chest,
a betrayal of a breast
and its landmines of cancer.

My visible scars are of parts uneeded,
an ovary full of potential disease,
breast tissue that burdened my body and spirit.

Some unseen scars have
their own stories,
little demons of iniquity,
embedded with tears.

2 comments:

Miss Sadie said...

So thoughtfully written, Diane.

But not all of our scars are visible, even when we're unclothed. Some of us have scarred minds; some have scarred souls. "Not all the victims of war come home in body bags."

Blessings to those whose scars are real, but not visible.

Kathie Brown said...

Love this poem and the truth it tells.