seeing

Seeing

Maybe we should spend more time in the ought-to-know places

in our brains, the way just a couple of seconds ago I saw a star

in the sky coming bright with sun and then all the sudden while I’m still

looking it’s gone out.  But it hasn’t.  I ought to know it hasn’t.  The sun’s

coming up is all.  Isn’t it still there and wouldn’t I see it if I put money

down on a good telescope whose truth never runs off to blind you,

like the ones whose poles yawn for quarters and when the tongue’s

plugged and the wheel’s spun we tip our faces to the rent by the second

binoculars and curse ourselves that it takes too long to pan the sky

to rest one more second on that desired site, a star for me, but maybe

a seal for my daughter, and a moored boat for her father who knows

just where to look, who doesn’t need to spend the 25 cents, who turns

his pockets inside out for her to see and see and see the whisker’d snout,

the liquid glint in the eyes, the slip and glide and rise through the incoming

outgoing tide, her mourning they’ve gone forever when the shutter

closes, the glee when they come back after she’s fed the meter again