Learning the Story of Scars
After the axe-head buried itself
in his ankle, my father clung to the log
he was splitting, squeezing his eyes
like fists. Twelve, he logged those woods
for years with his father--Arkansas,
the great depression, doing whatever they could.
Groaning, he jerked and jerked the axe
like a pump handle, he screamed
and went on pumping until the foot fell back,
hinged by the ankle, white and spurting.
With a bandana he held it and held it
while Arkansas flooded, and saw his father
running, his own axe raised ready to kill
whatever snake slashed the heel of his son.
I learned that scar like a tree
split by lightning, healed over,
knew my father had in him a boy
who had suffered alone in a forest.
"McDonald's evocation of nature and farming is impressively simple, but suggests mystery and depth."--Publisher's Weekly
"McDonald draws upon his personal vision of West Texas . . . offering a strong and sensitive image of the land, its people, its sense of space and struggle."--Books of the Southwest
"We are privy to a consciousness that encompasses Texas from the Gulf to the Caprock, from oxen-slow days to jet lag . . . Rafting the Brazos makes us wish the poet could . . . do nothing but chronicle the spirals of West Texas hawks."--Dallas Morning News
"West Texas, the land and its people, provide both the subject and the soul of McDonald's powerful poetry."--Writers at Work
About the Author: Walter McDonald is Paul W. Horn Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. His awards include three Western Heritage Awards, one for Rafting the Brazos; twice winner of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship Grant; Juniper Prize; George Elliston Poetry Prize; three-time winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Prize; 1992 Texas Professor of the Year awarded by CASE in Washington, D.C.
