SILENCES

Night  has scrubbed clean

The street of light

And sound.

Gone, the sound of church bells,

The whoosh of passing cars,

The echoes of spectators

Watching children playing soccer,

Sprinklers spritzing on, then off,

The roar of lawn-mowers--

All gone under the persistent,

Downward pressure of dark matter.

Air--that combination of oxygen

And nitrogen--

Clear in the daylight,

Becomes impenetrable.

See nothing/

Hear everything--

The night is made for listening,

The receipt of words,

The interpretation of silences.

Life’s alternating current--

Day, with the eyes open,

Absorbing,

Translating,

And night, when sight gives way

To sound,

Gives way to touch,

Gives way to smells

Of lotions, perfumes,

These hours--

Sacred, extraordinary, time--

For extrications, contractions,

Retractions and consents,

Rebirth

Of skin and spirit,

Blood and belief--

All in this weightlessness

Of night's caress.

ON HER BLINDNESS

With the right side of the world

invisible, not darkness--

there is no darkness except

when I close my eyes each night,

Navigating through  each day

is sometimes hard work to do.

The left eye, ninety-five percent

disconnected, the nerve torn

I stride down sidewalks quicker

than "normal" people believe.

"You're not really blind, you know,"

is shouted from some passing car.

By now, I just laugh at them.

If they only knew my life

from all its vantagepoints.

I would trade this cane, truly,

for a driver's license.

I envy their freedom--

always have. But I can see

the world at  a slower speed

as long as I have sidewalks,

or bike lanes, wider shoulders

on the roads I travel.

In my two-dimentional

world, I talk to people

everyday, and everyday,

strangers can't help but marvel

at my refusal to yield.

Let's take away their car keys,

force them to walk to bus stops,

waiting in all kinds of weather

for buses that never come.

Let them board buses that stop

too far from the curb 

to manage without stepping

in snow, in puddles, in mud.

Let them try to figure out

how to get from 

point A

to point B

without having to ask for help.

The empty half of my life

has always existed.
Everyone, and everything,

has height and width, but no depth.

"Where is...?" is answered by

someone pointing their finger,

which, of course, I cannot follow.

It must be hard--to drive, to look

where one is going. to shop,

to work, to play, just to live,

with all one's faculties intact:

how do you manage so well?

How do you manage to ask

such stimulating questions?

without tripping on your tongue,

without your brain convulsing

from the effort of inquiry?

I would really like to know.

OLD SNOW

Ten days old now,

the snow--what remains--

has lost its lightness,

has become hard, slick

dangerous, melting each day,

refreezing each night.

When it fell, I walked

from my studio

to take out my trash,

through fourteen inches

of wet and cold morning.

Now, when I go outside,

what remains is mostly on the grass,

at the edge of parking lots,

thinly spread on sidewalks

I have learned to carefully

navigate in boots--

not my tennis shoes.

Another week

of sunlight, and fifty degrees,

and maybe it will leave once

and for all, only to be replaced

by the next, inevitable, storm.

The groundhog didn't see his shadow,

so perhaps the snow won't fall

as late into this year

as it has in years past.

Copyright © 2016 by the author