If Words Could Mend

    for Karen

    by Beth Mills

If words could mend,

I would mend you,

Use them like trumpets, like calling stones,

Sending them out into an old world.

They’d summon out bone from the tree root,

Make it grow into you.

Harvest the blue of sea air,

Fresh cut for your breathing.

Search out marshlands,

And come on the wings of an egret,

Sleek and young and smooth,

To offer its flesh to your new bones.

Finished then, I would send you,

Back to the home of your good life,

Where you could grow old again,

With no harm anywhere in you.

© 2016  Beth Mills

Beth Mills has been a poet all her life. Her father read poetry to her from the time she could listen, and she carried her love for words into her elementary school classroom, helping children discover the poems inside them. Publications: Educational Leadership, Orbit 60, Mothers Always Write, Gemini Magazine.