Eye Poem

 

 

Mouse eyes looking for cheese in Budapest, Seoul, Talhausen or Taos —hardly matters where.

 

Or is my vision one of God’s homely gifts—hastily wrapped in the daily news and secured with old dirty pink rubber bands, placed in my hands with a snigger and the sound of a slamming door.

 

As I walk the rippling Van Gogh aisles of the supermarket and climb into the passenger seat for good I realize I am still holding the present.  Pulling off the yellowed newsprint that breaks in my hands like moth wings,

the powder of oldness, deadness

clings to the creases in my fingers like talcum powder.

 

The improbable gift peers at me like eyes emerged from deep green water.  Of course, this is a dream.  The word, this word, like a pure, precious mineral charged with sunlight filled my head: glory.

 

I saw then that I was, in fact, smack dab in the middle of everywhere.

 

Your face tattoos my retinas as you bend down to kiss me.  Though I do not see the middle of LOVE it is because the place from which I look 

is the middle.

 

Beware of lightning behind the eyes doctors warn but what about an inner sky like a Milky Way, like a meteor shower?  Can you tack that down with your lasers?

 

Seeing has little to do with eyelight.

My bare foot sees the ground, every bump and pebble, every cell is a holographic eye seeing everywhere at once.

 

So I will draw myself a map of the grocery store and label the aisles with squares reading: shortening, garbage bags, condiments and cereal.  I will find the toothbrush section.