While his body,
hands, hair, toes, lips, nose
sense the world directly -
kiss a thigh, cradle a body in the arms
wriggle in the bushy grass
play with the wind that
blows cool out of the north
scent gun smoke as
buckshot drops the duck from the sky
prickle on the straw chaff
run a hand through the purple alfalfa flowers
or the girl’s blond hair
bite down on the ripest peach,
which is summertime,
and it dribbles off the chin -
and his right eye sees the horizon
the bluster of grain and off
in the distance, the mountains tall
and red in the sunset -
the left eye is blind,
blind to that world
and in its blindness it searches,
following on its own the brightest source of light
tracking but never locking on
but in the searching static
traces of the message shine through
to the antenna of his cornea
and through the transducer of the retina
feed the right half of the brain,
the half of poetry and instinct and holistic thought -
and the signal
rearranges the world.
The thigh is not just a thigh,
the wind is more than air
the mountains are columns to hold up the sky
and we should all be so lucky
to be born with a blind left eye.