Meditation on a Pinkie Toe

      Once, while still a schoolgirl, I was asked

which part of the body is superfluous*, and feeling myself

certain, I offered you, little friend, my little crooked gnome,

acringe against the fenceline of self.  I apologize.  You,

callused smooth as moonstone, help me

keep hold of this earth.  With your extensor and flexor subtly

balanced, you humbly hold my two

most lateral of fourteen distant phalanges.

       Why even before 1728 when print first proved it,

you were already the piggy who talked.  And though "wee wee wee"

be somewhat inchoate, it makes only sense since the Chinese know you

as The Extremity of Yin -- the farthest point on the meridian

of bladder.  It is said you are helpful

for dysuria and eye pain and that your nail point,

when prodded with a fire stick, can turn a fetus in the womb,

perhaps saving two lives.

        And yet, for all that, you are not independent.  I cannot lift

you without taking two neighbors along. You harbor fungus,

and your nail -- a disaster!  Thick as a quarter, equally

opaque.  Oh, though the Chinese say you protect,

that you armor, I cannot think but that mostly you skulk,

shirking, curling into the seam of my sock.

        And even after I move you, after I take you

in hand and push and pull and pop, the blood suddenly

remembering you, even then,

        you can only reach down.

* correct answer: appendix

Tracy Koretsky asks that you help yourself to a download of  Even Before My Own Name from www.TracyKoretsky.com. This memoir in poems earned eighteen prizes ranging from haiku to prose poem. The site also features audio poems, reviews and interviews. A co-editor at the former e-zine,Triplopia, her short stories, poetry, and critical essays are widely published and awarded,  including three Pushcart nominations. She is also the author of  Ropeless,(www.ReadRopeless.com) a 15-time award-winning novel that celebrates possibility despite disability.