I was in a Manhattan coffee joint on the corner of Lexington and Thirty-ninth, my guide dog curled at my feet. She flicked her tongue like an ant eater looking for crumbs.
A man seated nearby said to someone via cellphone: “I told you not to sell the thing!”
I wondered what “the thing” could be.
This was an obvious pleasure.
My blueberry.
**
For the reason
That many may think otherwise
I listen to my simple heart
**
Things we can miss:
Leaves shaded for morning
Paths for both hands
The gift of smoke, echoes in rooms
Sometimes our eyes were bitter
When birds had flown
**
Napkin
After everything
After so much blind life
Not seeing true stars
Or the face of my wife
I will go
And the going will be green
Joyful, satisfied, bowed-down…
**
Mornings I roll a wheel
Unseeable
East to West
North to South
In the privacy
Of my room
**
Yellow Bird
Though I couldn’t see you, not precisely, I touched the window…
**
In the story of Brigadoon people are enchanted in a mythic village, a place of love outside of time and customary space. There are hundreds of variants of the story and of course there’s Lerner and Loewe. Heck there’s even a Star Trek version.
No one carries luggage…
**
From the Finnish Hunger Museum: Thistle Soup
You’re hungry so you walk into a field
Grab two handfuls of spiky thistles
(You don’t have gloves)
Chop and boil
Until water absorbs the sap
And you have some very green juice
Add two quarts of stock
Two wild onions — tops and all —
Now toss in 1/2 pound of fish
(Heal-all, Poore Man’s Jewell…)
**
More about appetite:
I needed to find a job. I wanted an engaged life. Notice: blind poet seeks employment. I licked envelopes and stuffed them in the mail. Was it my imagination or did rejections come as fast as I posted my letters? Of course the odds were steep. I applied for government assistance: section 8 housing; food stamps, social security disability. I took a penalty and cashed in my modest retirement savings from my decade of adjunct teaching. I applied to arts colonies where writers and artists are fed and housed while they work on their current projects. I wore a path in the sidewalk between my apartment and the local post office. The post master loved my guide dog and gave her biscuits. She’d turn toward the federal building whether we were headed there or not.
**
I write poetry, a foolishness
Much like thinking
The heart
Has an Edenic flavor—
Continue my mistake
In these times
I’m dying king alright
Fine saying so
When I was very small
My father bought me
A kite and you can imagine
That sightless boy
Holding a string
Planet of the Blind 