“To witness is not enough. We must ask what we choose to see, and what we allow ourselves to forget.” - Poet
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I spy with my little eye a fawn stepping through timothy and clover a thrush calling from flowering forsythia a squirrel spiraling up the bark a rabbit in the sweet grass over there I spy with my little eye a babbling brook carrying leaves of rust and gold a kingfisher diving where the water bends a breeze lifting geese in gliding flight moonlight splitting the frozen needles of mountain pine I spy with my little eye a barefoot child caked in mud a man curled where garbage gathers a house with no walls, no roof, no door a funeral with no one left to— * I spy with my little eye—a deer running (fleeing) a child singing (or was that crying) a game (or a lie? or both? or—) The game taught me to see—I am fluent now I distinguish the fawn from the child by the weight of their need I know muck from clover by what I can bear to turn from The world spies with its little eye It sees me seeing It watches me separate beauty from beauty— call one "nature" and one "news" frame one, parchment the other love one, forget one in the eye's blink of mercy The deer is running—running—I am calling it fleeing The child is—I am making it lost—to what was What do I call this— Selection? Curation? The formula of witness, the equation of complicity? What do I call the distance between seeing and saying? What do I call myself— Player? Spy? Judge? The one who closes his eyes and calls it visionary?
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