No Scar (Poetry)

Headlamps slice, cool and quick, through night’s damp skin,
part soft flesh of foliage, its tendons thin
as branches, pallid walls laid bare as urban bone
nerveless as the lightening blade that strikes wet stone.

Scalpel-sharp the slash; the arc; the silver sweep
lasering across the lawns awash with sleep,
cutting shadows from the land and stitching time
frame by frame, in silhouette, a narrow line.

The scar we leave behind us, scything our blind way,
heals itself with distance, fading, black on grey;
shrinking into nothing — no memory of pain;
a brilliant stab in passing, blotted out by rain.