Text: Everyone’s Given Their Own Set of Eyes

EVERYONE’S GIVEN THEIR OWN SET OF EYES

Everyone’s given their own set of eyes
to see through

from the lake of the heart its mercury mirror
aslant slightly to tilt back God’s Light

which is what we see by that small
special glitter in the eyes visible to

other eyes and their actual illumination
by which we see the gliding black

red-beaked bird that lives in the
high Alps as it wheels in gray sky

looking for scraps or tourist handouts

and then over enormous distances in one
glance and that glance may not be

even physical nor this seeing at all be
completely physical as when the

Prophet saw the seventy thousand
veils of light and darkness at the

Ascension and saw out over Jerusalem and
remembered its layout later to prove his

supernatural visit there may Allah be pleased with him a
thousand times over

These little eyes of ours also like treasures not
enumerated in Ali Baba’s cave among the

rubies and topazes tumbling from its chests
these eyes of ours more precious by far than any jewel

seeing red flamingos on a green hillside with their
heads tucked underneath their wings

or glittering glints of light like a billion
flakes of other worlds on the surface of a

rushing cascade from a nearby mountain height
all things visual and all things supervisual

The shaft of illumination that makes itself into a
walkable stairway over this abysmal world

into charted particles of auditory splendor
ambiently scattering the clear voice of One God

all around us in myriad movements

each glimpse of glamorous planetary motion
or nebula splattered in space its golden or

scarlet nimbus in blackness

each sight of a beloved’s uplit face catching
sight of us seeing their two eyes

happily seeing back at us in the same moment
in time and space

6/7/2006 (from In the Realm of Neither / unpublished)

Categories: Poems