"Removal"

 

I am unfettered

Glass and wire left behind

forsaken

 

I am the sightless

I denounce frames and lenses

Like false gods

 

I am a disciple

fear replaced by loss understood

 

I am the naked prophet

Disrobed

after prolonged oppression

 

I am baptized by blindness

dipped into the water

Fully submerged

The glasses wash away

Swept aside in the river’s current

Sins relinquished.

 

Like a prophet, I convert

Yet I rise -- a Lazarus

A Believer.

 

I wonder

If my eyes weren’t taken

would I still be the same?

 

 

"Orbituary"

 

Old ways are replaced, like the beasts

Sent to slaughter after the invention of combustion engines

 

The beloved written word, the character patterns that enthralled

Have gone.

Printing press and paperback are inaccessible, though

The desire to hold and smell books

Put the paper close to an ear and thumb the thickness

Delight in the nose-tingling swish of air, pulpy and acrid

Remains, akin to a craving.

 

The act itself

The devouring of pages

is lost to macular degeneration

physical contact thwarted by

Blurred vision, sensory affliction

 

The death of an eye