Ekphrasis of a Face on a Tree

This palette of oak grows
with a marbling of pale green

lichen to frame its pain.
Sculpted on a trunk, two swirling burls,

a bulging body and a face
with the tough skin of bark.

A dappling of color to offset despair.
And what of the ivy that twines

towards this sight? An Almighty mind-
shift against survival of the fittest?

The unseen hand scrapes beauty
out of wounds, injury as medium,

near-death the instrument of the master.
The features poised uppermost

on the tree express wonder broken-free
of the soil at her feet, eyes half-closed

in reverie, mouth open in an “O”—
Oh, I’ve known this sort of wonder,

metal staples holding together the skin
of life, this scar I wear on my torso.

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Ellen Austin-Li’s work has appeared in Artemis, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Maine Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Rust + Moth, and other places. Her first chapbook, Firefly, was published by Finishing Line Press (2019); her second chapbook, Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic, is forthcoming (FLP 2021). A recipient of the Martin B. Bernstein Fellowship in Poetry, she is an MFA candidate at the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.