For the Blind
There Will
Always
Be Beauty
Stop
and take this moment apart.
Hold
it still
in
your hands.
Speak
to it softly,
like a
stunned dove
accepting
surrender.
Feel
its heart beating
through
the skin
of
your palms,
that age-old
posture
for prayer.
Now
do the same
with
yourself.
Unless
you’re a yogi
we
haunt our bodies,
ghosts
trapped
in
the darkness
of
a rented house.
Guess
who’s the landlord?
Not
you, nor I.
Our
craniums are
a cave of shadows.
Because
we can’t forget
anything
really,
we
end up shutting
the
unforgettable up
in rooms inside ourselves.
The
heart is a chamber.
The
mind, a mansion.
The
body, a castle,
The
mouth, a trapdoor
tasting
everything
before
swallowing
it
down.
The
stomach,
a
labyrinthian maze
with
only two exits,
cannot
be bypassed.
Beware
the ogre,
a
golem made of
all
that’s lodged
and
growing
in
the dark,
Take
my hand,
we’ll
go together.
Everything
inside
having a correlation
on
the outside.
A
vein is a road.
Each
organ, a room.
The
eyes, a window
with
a velvet veil.
Each
hand, a tree.
The
skin, a wall.
Emotions,
weather.
Thoughts,
a guest.
The
mind, a
beleaguered
host.
I
have no clue
how
to be a man, nor
to
be in this moment
without fear or worry.
Take
my hand anyway.
We
can go together
through
both our darks.
Only
the blind can
see things as they are.
What’s
essential is
invisible
to the eye.
The
blind take responsibility
for what the seeing
so easily reject.
The
blind touch museums
where
the seeing
might view
only rubble.
The
blind sense sentiment
for
what it is,
the
shadow of
a privileged
cruelty.
How
else is one
to
parse the chafe
from the wheat
if not
with the hands?
We
who
cannot
go back
to
anything.
And
so, we dream;
the means
our
souls sift
through
the rubble
of
our successes
and excesses.
A
single dream
can
undo a knot,
unlock
a door,
shed
a skin,
resurrect
what’s past.
Dreaming
is to the soul
what
sign language is
to
the deaf.
Reality
has nothing on
a
night of dreaming.
So, why
not practice
finding
beauty
even
in our harrow?
11/7/22
No comments:
Post a Comment