You are my broke toe
which can’t be set—
no band-aid, splint,
no easy pill to swallow
but time’s slow fix,
this ragged knit of bone
and cartilage and shadow
till the hair-line cracks
that craze my old porcelain
mend, not whole but stronger,
misshapen maybe, baby—
yes, scarred, but healed
enough to ease this mizry,
to shake this forever limp.
Richard Taylor is a professor of English and currently serves as Kenan Visiting Writer at Transylvania University. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two novels, and several books of non-fiction, mostly relating to Kentucky history. A former dean and teacher in the Governor’s Scholars Program, he was selected as Distinguished Professor at Kentucky State University in 1992. He has won two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Al Smith Creative Writing Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. He and his wife Lizz own Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky.