(poets must)

 

exert a double vision; should have eyes

to see near things as comprehensively

as if afar they took their point of sight

and distant things, as intimately deep

as if they touched them

(lines 182-187)

elizabeth barret browning aurora leigh

 

 

this body’s franchised to me on uncertain lease

slippery to grasp or approach frankly

 

after uncertain time

i begin to admit i’m seeing double

 

images echoed by their identical other

make it hard to tell the real from the illusion

 

 

is seeing believing 

or believing seeing

 

 

whose i  is this through which i see

knowing the essential in di visible

 

a willingness to cross the divide

me in here                 you out there

 

out there

           

out there morning witnesses two falcons

over bright beech leaves

tumble down the sunfilled air

disrupt the neighbourhood’s pecking order

 

crows whose voices crank each eye open

remove a block away

the outlaws prey among pigeons and squirrels

the small songbirds

kree kree kree

punctures the balloon of normalcy

in here

life jiggles a particular form

where i end and you begin

space between us sometimes words and touch can’t span

 

so bottled up

when we meet   

we’re rattled

 

prisms in my lenses

the optician declares

will gift me a single i

she doesn’t address why

i’ve begun to see this way

thinks it in-ad-vis-able to leave

undoctored

 

 

i beg to differ

 

if you want something to shrink

first you need to let it grow

 

between these two i’s the gap’s widening

 

the father eye of light i cover with a patch

suddenly my neck swings back

the mother eye of dark stays put

receives the world the other eye’d been snatching at

my pace slows as the eye in the dark still registers squiggles of light

in heightened space the receiving eye and world tango

 

seeing double’s troubling

a sinkhole’s appeared in the lie of my land

everything i think i know

sucked away

 

 

mind

 

do you mind never mind i don’t mind

 

 

mind we see lodged in the head

 

optical delusion of consciousness

 

nothing in here that’s not out there

 

from the beech tree the falcon drops

a small creature swoons into death

a thousand feathers

like snow

 

one morning

i see most clearly

through the telescope

one falcon alone

perched on the highest branch

 

kree kree kree

kree kree kree

kree kree kree

 

head turning on shoulders scans the sky

baby beak small as a picture hook

searching searching searching

i’m sure

for the greater mother