Homage

That small dent
in the end of my nose?
An homage to a pock-marking
illness in childhood and to
the good aim of my neighbor
with a rock as he took the scab
clean away with one throw.
Left me with the divot scar
and my first inkling
that it might be,
at some point,
considered ugly.

But not to me,
not then at least; I wore
that perfect circle
as a proud badge of
surviving a scrape —
and later on,
when my neighbor died,
dragged by a mundane car
down a mundane street?
It was his only memorial,
the only mark he left on earth
in his eight short years here.
I honor the scar —
no ugliness in it, relic of
one violent moment
of art and skill.