SEEK & FIND

A friend who’s going blind

says late at night she listens,

and not in any way she’s known before.

She says the sounds rush in

as though she were their shelter.

Inside she’s growing vast. She senses space.

The wind is never calm, she says.

And light seems filled with static.

Most sounds she’s traced to settling,

buildings and bodies pulled deeper down.

She keeps her eyes closed hours

to practice. Inward perfects its hold.

Lately her sight has narrowed

to hold more memory and color,

each thing vibrant with similar concerns,

with linked experience and subtle change.

The blue and yellow dawns flame far,

the idea of silence lost inside a scream.

Recently, at a town parade, she gasped.

The banners floated by, the letters huge

and stenciled, and I thought she’d lost them all.

Instead, she clapped. I think too much

on her behalf, and can’t hear wonder,

and can’t hear lonely’s quiet joy.

She clapped for waving hands

and our town’s second century

ushered past on hand-made floats.

She told me later, when heading home,

within the tissue flowers she had

seen the real ones interspersed.

She wondered—with the two block route,

the packed-in crowds, the fury of celebration

meant to lift us from our hearts—

who would take such tender care.

It was like a hidden picture childhood game.

Had I also seen them? Weren’t the reds so deep?

appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Volume 4, Issue 2