Poem #3
After Kindred, 1979
It looks like noise.
The interruption of her is not just blood
but a cautious letting of the tools of a trade
long benefiting others while she stood
with one half her arm buried in a wall,
a time, a space that travels through her veins
as if an intracoastal waterway between Now and Then.
Sometimes when I drive I95, the part that is the Route 1 of my father’s boyhood,
the interruption happens and the autosave feature of my blood flips through its catalog.
It could be noise.
My dad appears in my dreams and my temper
often enough that when his phone number appears
on my caller ID, Daddy? I say jovially like a joke
is being played, half expecting to hear
water, humming. Which may explain
when I met her, I already knew her.
The blood does not forget. And noise is its
coagulate. This. Many times. Every time: genesis.
darlene anita scott 