What the Seeing Think They See

What the Seeing Think They See

As fragile as it is, it’s glass that,

even though it has the most

to lose being broken

protects us the most as we look

out during the rise and decline

of our day to day, hour by hour

(yes, for some, the dying

or the about to be

born, say) second

by second lives.  How, as sun

rises above this stand of river

pines or that line of cove

spruce we watch the water pull

herself up like pants after a long

time off or if not off at least below

the knee, the spring life plea

purged (for now) and the cuffs

like leg irons chuff and rattle

as the sexed wander off to meet

the tide and try to beat it.  Don’t we,

looking through the glassed-in view

of our own lives, corneas pupils

irises the broad sclera, feel somewhat 

apart from or even above it 

all, watching what comes and goes 

without feeling

it on our cheek or hearing the rut

and grunt and don’t we look partly

away, piqued all the while saying

not me, not me?  Who first,

and who can say, is going to break

the glass?  The watched or

the watcher?  Are the watched too?

in some way, (maybe even sneakier

because of the fee) voyeurs, giving

their thrust their pent up sarcophagi 

sweating ll for the audience?

I mean listen, authenticity alone

is at stake.  We make the most

of our glass no matter what side

of it we stand on, even when some

anonymous bird, shunted by the sun’s

glare, sees nothing and at her best

possible speed flies straight into a wall

of air breast first and plunges

as far down as the ground can go. And

having met so, this glass spreads the way

webs spread when a body just begins

to fall or be shoved through them: 

they stretch and hold on, stretch 

and hold.  And the light that falls

through, beginning at once to be 

blotted by a coat 

pocket or lip is Noah on his boat,

dry land all around, the immensity

of a blue too much blue, way glass has

of keeping it, secretly, briefly, in the 

gasses of the between