top of page
Cataract
Where my eyeball used to be
there is a glass with a fog
everything is fogged – the jacarandas
crying their purple tears
like soft rain they splash
blurring outlines, roads run
into one another crying mauve war cries
once I was young, believe me
history does not lie – between my forefinger
and my thumb I bent spoons
soft metal, soft as butter
I try on pairs of glasses, walk chalk lines
across a quadrangle – look, here
is a pathway I used every day to school
now obscured by dust and rubble
look, I see as clearly as a chameleon
holding on to leaves, my sticky tongue
climbs to the highest branches
touching lilac blossoms
I carefully slide down, know the way by heart
On page eighty of my notebook lives my grandmother
wearing horn-rimmed glasses like a man
I can’t see her but she’s there I know
each night she puts her dentures in a glass of water
it’s blurred but I can see them quite well
floating behind a mist of bubbles
A wise woman, she read her bible, had a saying
for every occasion – her favorite from Robbie Burns
“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us”
(wiping her bifocals with a lavender handkerchief)
“To see oursels as others see us!”
© Johnmichael Simon
2013
.
bottom of page