Always Looking

always looking…
…a blind man’s fingers
on rough wood grain
feel the story in its ridges

always looking…
…a woman in her mirror
searching for her soul’s becoming
finds the segments of her face


you too…
glimpsing the afterthought,
in an image’s refracted light,
saw light returned
shifted and second-hand

looking…
…with your vision as narrow
as a door half-closed and closing
narrowed to the slightest crack

for all the sky or cloud you ever saw
or the stars at midnight bleeding white
you were left trapped inside the chasm

looking…
…hard and long
as if all seeing was in that glance
you took what light was given
but could never set it free

unbending it found you in the end
through the prism of your pride
its scattering densities spilled colour
cast your impurities as grains of shadow…

…with you yourself
reflected in the landscape
in frames and compositions,
solitary, mirrored, simplified

always looking…
…for a point of balance
where lines of perspective meet
looking for something, some other thing
through which you might see

always looking…
…obliquely catching sight
in peripheral vision as if
truth would reveal itself
and blind you in its radiance

© BH, 2017

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A little spin round looking. I’ve recently read Georgina Harding’s The Gun Room and found its exploration of what and how we see fascinating. Some of it centred on the photographer’s ability to look through the lens and be protected by it from seeing too much.

You might read ‘artist’ or ‘writer’ for ‘photographer’. We all filter and select, trying to see clearly through our medium of choice, presenting the truth of it modified in the process.

Whether we actually see truth at all is the vexed question. What we give you, the viewer or reader, is as true as anything. Or nothing at all.