Planet of the Blind

In the islands you see the bravest birds
And they are strangely like you—

A nakedness, a hunger…
This is what our refusal to die really is

A red memory surrounded by light
And I imagine yes, I will never get home

A stone bridge in a woody place—
You know where it is
Halfway between stalks without blossoms
And the houses of grandfathers

The path is just grass
Where no one arrives
And I remember as a boy
Built on insecure emptiness

On hands and knees
Blind in a forest
Feeling how something
Was taking my place

Do you remember the old “Helen Keller joke” where the family moves her furniture? What can I say? It hurt me as a blind child.
The old saying, “sticks and stones” is nonsense.
The motive behind that joke was to make a blind-deaf woman appear insignificant, which means, beneath contemplation.
In my world I want all the children to play together happily.
I want a new language to develop.
Meanwhile I’m going to travel all day in the open boat of a poem.
In other words I’m going to merely grow.

The birds watched as I made my way
A blind man groping among fruit trees

I’d say his life chafed against him
But he believed in alchemy

He said to himself, I am so vulnerable!
Hurry! Even on a warm afternoon

The world made him ill at ease
He stood a long while in blue weeds

He heard how the branches swung
In a wind that swings

In a life that sways toward life
A man nimble fingered

And so he found a smooth skin
At the bottom of the sky

Where his forehead fit
Kiss to kiss eyes closed

Though this wasn’t the story, not at all
It was the insignificant heart

That was what it was

This morning taking my trash to the curb I thought how utterly useless the dead are. We have thousands of years of ghost stories but none about the dead as helpmates. I want the dead to clean my house. I’m well over sixty and I’ve given up on making new friendships. But I could use some spirits without expressions to handle my basic chores.

What would I pay them? I’d give them a miniature self portrait where I’m half human, half mole.

If they washed my windows (a fitting job for them) I’d give them the straws I use to measure snow in winter.

Its late spring, almost summer and the birds are flying today with a renewed willingness, as if they’ve solved the trick of living power animated by their ancestors.

But living men and women are trapped, doing their own chores…

You can tell me anything
Your words don’t matter
There’s an iron kettle inside you
Where the soiled rags of your ancestors
Float and sink
By a riverbank

The Four Seasons

They try to break you by not being obvious
Housing prices go up if you’re Black

December rain on your neck
“We can’t install a ramp…”

Where are Shelley’s legislators
Where is Batman

A bus rumbles by with an advertisement for lawyers
Do you think the attorneys read poetry

My dog looks at me
Don’t worry I tell her

It’s just seasonal tears

I’m a shadow—what a thing to say—
I mean, blindness is outside…

Now there’s a man
(As all children know)
Who’s inside
A gingerbread man

**

I dragged the poem from the woods. I was a peasant after all, shoes wet. What was I to do? Winter was coming…

**

Safely home he sits with the gingerbread man who remains inside him
The blind homunculus doppelgänger puppet of the abyss

**

One migrates backwards
Into the emptying self

Dear God, I can’t help you—not anymore
And blind as I am, at present I’m listening
To a lonesome goldfinch

Who has mistaken the next kingdom
For this one (I think you know)
And the world is about time ticking down

And an old woman I know shares her books
And some of us love each other
And I can’t help you— not anymore

We won’t be broken

Tomorrow I’m having major eye surgery. Briefly, I dislodged the artificial lens in my right eye and it needs to be removed and replaced. In the world according to custom this should be easy but I have severely damaged retinas in both eyes—this is why I’m blind to begin with. The procedure will be tricky. I joke about it. “If I lose the eye I’ll wear an eye patch and get a parrot…”

All surgery is risky. And while this isn’t as precarious as many operations, my anxiety levels are “elevated.”

Anxiety stands flickering in the sunlight.
Anxiety accuses me of what I’ve never become.
It flies in the mind like excited birds.