Nancy Scott

MOBILITY

(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)

 

Not a fishing pole or a sword.
Not a wand, no matter what you wish.
Not a witch’s broom.
Just a cane to touch things far away
and bounce sound in constant contact
vibrating distance to trained ears and a hand.

Grooves or smooth or changing level ground.
Trap doors and tree roots and trippable curbs.
Cars and grass and people not watching where they go.
Planters and benches and wet floor signs
and stairs.

Trust the long reach from metal tip to wrist.
Trust side-to-side tap and rasp.
Decide risk knowing forward changes fast.
Shift myths to blindly stride toward inheriting exclusion.

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About the Author

Nancy Scott’s over 850 essays and poems have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and as audio commentaries. Her latest chapbook appears on Amazon, The Almost Abecedarian. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Recent work appears in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Braille Forum, Chrysanthemum, Kaleidoscope, One Sentence Poems, Shark Reef, Wordgathering, and The Mighty, which regularly publishes to Yahoo News.