Penny Harter
ODE TO A BAND-AID
Over the years, how often I have run to yourtin box or cardboard container, searching forthe perfect closure. Some of your kind are big enough for a skinned knee; others like thebutterfly can pull together delicate edges, skinto skin. How frantic we are as we grab whichof you we can find in our cabinet of magic,then tear the red thread of your wrapper downyour side as if it were a thin seam marked withblood that you might staunch.Not always welcome, though, is your after-lifediscarded on the ballfield dirt, dropped under thebleachers, or tossed into the waste beside the sickbed, your stained face open and staring at uswith proof of what is kept inside—blood, pus,any seepage from your hoped-for repair. Of allyour incarnations I love the butterfly the most,a winged hinting at the transformation you willbring to a child’s bloodied brow, or to the pit leftfrom an excised skin blemish taken for biopsy.Indispensable helper, how carefully I peel off theprotective papers on either side of your stickypromise to adhere, apply you just so, check youfrequently to be sure you aren’t soaked throughand need replacement. Even your name, band-aidis so right, your purpose to aid the band of human-kind, taking the place of dirty strips of cloth rippedoff a sleeve on the battlefield, or a roll of filmygauze too soon unraveling, lacking the glue thatbinds you to our flesh, dear band-aid, little friend.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Penny Harter: “After a pandemic year of writing frequent poems focused on offering hope to myself and others, I gathered those poems into a forthcoming collection. For some weeks after that, I stopped writing, but now it’s spring, I’m celebrating having gotten the Covid vaccine, and it’s time to move on into new work. The older I get, the more I realize we are a sum of all our memories, both easily accessed and well buried. In different ways, I feel these newer poems are simultaneously visiting both past and present.” (web)
Related* “Blue Sky” by Penny Harter * “Night Howls” by Penny Harter * “Writing Poems on Zoom with My Grandchildren” by Wendy Mnookin