New Eyes

1.
The red squirrel darts, pauses,
flicks its tail this way, then that.

The December day is clear and fine.
I describe this to you,
though I don't know if squirrels
or weather interest you.
Why tell you about your sister
or Christmas,
the clothes I keep under the bed?

As if speech could stitch the living to the dead.

We are here, you see. Our eyes still
wander over the everyday,
gulping it down.

2.
I imagine the gloved hands
of a surgeon, his touch
delicate as snow;
Stainless steel carving
sight out of you
grafting it to new eyes.

When she came to
did her eyes leap
to catch the world
as it ran at her?

Or, looking in
a borrowed window,
do strangers fall into the dark of you?

3.
The Hebrew word for heaven
means "another time"
or "another place."

Daughter, I think of you
in alternate space,
a membrane so thin
I could reach across

our worlds running side by
side, invisible tracks, a
delicious passing

or the squirrel' s flick of tail,
first on your side, then on
mine.

--Eleanor Vincent

 

Last modified: 11 May 2000