LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS*     

 

with thanks to Susan Danberg, OD

 

 

In vision therapy, she says to think

of the eyes as if on string:

your mind must haul them together

hand over hand to see a round world.

 

Can you make red and green

become one color,

without losing fall or spring?

 

To see straight,

you must go crooked

cross your eyes a little,

 

and look into the corners of the world,

see what is hidden there:

 

sometimes a face

will float up in the emptiness.

 

Before the mind’s eyes

can see as one,

your right finger must become two

 

and move as two and feel as two

though it is still only one finger.

 

Soon you will understand

the secret: how space, embodied,

loves all that it touches.

 

Yes, a hand reaching out

is a thing of beauty, yes.

 

Have you seen the trees

for the forest, the bright ones in front

and those in the dark farther on?

 

They whisper: there is no negative space,

only a shapely void– delicate

as a squash or a pale Arctic lemming.

 

The full bowl of day spills

into evening.

 

Let your eyes fill

with all that is left behind,

adoring everything hollow.

*published in www.collectivedreamartsmag.com in slightly different form, but thank you very much Kayla Bowen!

And now I highly recommend that if you want to see the two art pieces of mine that Kayla chose, as well as another poem, go on over to the website and sign up for a digital copy of the magazine. Also because there are some other wonderful pieces of work there too. I was amazed. Some of them moved me to tears…

Hey, we all dream, don’t we? And this is really a remarkable undertaking. Beautifully done both in art and writing (and I would say that whether or not my art and poems were represented…).