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