Either Out Far or In Deep
My nearsighted eye is for splinters, the threading of needles,
the scales on a monarch’s wing, the atom within the atom.
But as for the hills and trees — it sees only promising haze.
My farsighted eye distinguishes mile-off exits,
stealth bombers, the weather of exoplanets.
It can tell the time on the wall –but not on my wrist.
Sometimes I worry my worries are paradoxical,
at once galactically huge and absurdly small,
but as far as I can see, that’s what everyone feels.
I’ve never seen such a prescription, says the optometrist.
Let’s make them the same. No thanks: the most dangerous people
walk around all day agreeing with themselves.
The one eye sees way out in the infinite multiverse
infinite versions of me, both better and worse.
They probably average out–should I worry?
The other one sees that down in my billions of cells,
my trillions of trillions of coiling molecules,
there is nothing at all I could really call myself.
I figure my two bad eyes together are one pretty good one,
argumentative, sure, but agreeing in the end
that far out is no further from me than far in.
It’s the middle distance they have some trouble with,
beginning about at arm’s length and comprising
tête-à-têtes, committees–some days, my whole life.
I can’t see your point then, I can’t see where you’re coming from,
I can’t read the room, and worse, I can’t read your face.
It feels like, near or far, I’m blinded by everything.
If I blunder then, if I stumble, it’s my eyes contending
over which of their visions should be trusted.
Step back the one eye says. No, closer, says the other.
Dot…Dot…Dot…
That chill glass you were offering,
its drip drip drip…
three smoothly valving
valves of a trumpet…
where in the snow a sparrow
hopped thrice and levitated…
not quite remembering
the fourth thing you had meant to say…
not quite forgetting…
your not quite wordless breathing
in out in….
my faint reluctance
to seem to have asserted
anything…
diminuendo that might turn
a mere end into an ending…
or an ending into less of an end…
