How Many Eyes?

How many eyes

Have looked up

And seen the stars remain the same:

The same as ever?

How many eyes bear witness
To the season’s edge
To the cusp of day and night,
To the storm-front clearing after rain
To the blinding sun
And the dazzling moon?

thrall

shuffling

people waiting
a moment’s pause in the work-day
food-lines’ uninspiring insipidness
filling the hunger-gap
tediously stretching time and sustenance
till the stopped-clock ticks again
till hands turn gainfully back
to earn their keep
earning their masters’ keep

Horizon

An edge of memory
Like a mountain in the distance
Separates heaven and earth.

My eye, the one unblinking
Behind sinew, nerve and blood,
The camera eye I see the world in,
Scans the landscape.

I have a place in mind:
A rock, a seashore and an ocean
Of waves to a shore in the small distance.

The broad sea-loch is rimmed
By sand-shallows and inlets
Where tiny islands and channels
Guide the tide-run
And the swell rises in uneven lines
From open sea to sullen beach.

Azimuth

Every landscape in its frame,
A moment-by-moment composition,
Textured life scratched on ground,
The green field, the birch-wood going upwards,
The tree-starved, muir-burned hills.

Light falls from another place
and runs like water from a clear sky.

Skyline

There is only beach and sea.

Sand for miles curves before beach houses
Elevated above hurricane and flooding tides.

Breakers come ashore like waves on any coast
Here, where the foam settles, the water is murky,
Warm, invisible to the touch.