Erik Muller, one poem

In May 2008 there was a poetry reading in Klamath Falls that featured five Oregon poets and pie. One of those poets was Erik Muller. I first met Erik through the Oregon Poetry Association; he was one of the poets who helped nudge me into being a poetry community organizer. Word was passed today that Erik has died. The world has lost a kind, wonderful man and a great poet. For today, here is a poem (originally published in Cloudbank #3, 2010) from Erik’s book Steps:

THIS SCAR

 
With a tool you might get
at Office Max to pry staples
from a cardboard box

my surgeon’s nurse bends
to her work, saying sorry
with each staple pulled

for I am no cardboard box
and the scar still raw
not yet hard and knobby.

Sorry, she repeats, while I watch
her hand moving down the row,
each pull a shrill pain,

the high note of a flute
just about inaudible.
I breathe out, OK.

Now as I look at the scar
as a possession not quite mine,
a fair prize affixed to me,

my tattoo, my piercing,
I think about the surgeon’s
hand inside the incision

removing what he expected
and found, then an officious
machine planting staples.

Happiness, my happiness,
it wraps around my life,
something he did not touch.

It can never be taken from me.
Nor can I ever say to you
as with this scar, See, here it is.

                                                            Photo courtesy Erik Muller