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Faint white crescent scar on my right knee: bit by a dog. Blue-black graphite in my hand: the pencil I caught in second grade that broke off in my palm. Ache in my right tibia when the weather changes: twice-broken bone. Straight white line on my palm: surgery to remove the long wooden splinter I hid as a child until the infection spread up my wrist. Tiny silver lightning bolt below my right hipbone: second-baby stretch mark.

Fake front teeth: racing to room draw in college. I vaulted over a cement wall except didn’t, because suddenly there were broken teeth and blood everywhere. (The friend I was with missed room draw to help me out and ended up in a dank fly-infested basement room our sophomore year. Did I ever thank you for that, Stephen? Thank you.)

Every time I read this poem I think about all the hidden stories we carry in our bodies as our bodies carry us through our lives.

Basal Cell, by George Bilgere

The sun is still burning in my skin
even though it set half-an-hour ago,
and Cindy and Bob and Bev and John
are pulling on their sweatshirts
and gathering around the fire pit.

John hands me a cold one
and now Bev comes into my arms
and I can feel the sun’s heat,
and taste the Pacific on her cheek.

I am not in Vietnam
nor is John or Bob, because
our deferments came through,
and we get to remain boys
for at least another summer
like this one in Santa Cruz,
surfing the afternoons in a sweet
blue dream I’m remembering now,

as the nurse puts my cheek to sleep,
and the doctor begins to burn
those summers away.

Click here for more information about poet George Bilgere. Today’s poem is from his collection The White Museum, published in
2010 by Autumn House Press.  

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