This morning a volcano
turned back into a neck,
simply a neck.
Decades after a tiny
muscle knot had wandered
or was pushed up
under the skull’s tight base,
this morning it emerged,
brimming with thanks.
One small piece of my life
inflamed from being pinned
under the rest
ceased to erupt, stopped spewing
its pain and settled into
the soft landscape.
After long months of stretching,
shrugging, heating, icing,
taken on faith,
today I know it worked,
restoring a volcano
into a neck.
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Claudia Gary is a poet, science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal songs and chamber music. She teaches workshops on villanelle, sonnet, meter, “Poetry vs. Trauma,” and the science of poetry at The Writer’s Center and privately via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2005) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also an advisory editor for New Verse Review. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music can be found at Expansive Poetry Online. Her chapbooks are available via her listing on Poets & Writers.
“The difficult process of untying a longstanding muscle knot was a reminder of how deeply physical and emotional healing can contribute to one another.”
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