What the Mind's Eye Sees
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Blinks are the punctuation of perception, tiny pauses between the flowing sentences of eye sight and what the mind sees. Each blink is a brief micro-interruption, a moment of darkness, a time when the world briefly disappears, only to be reborn in an instant. Blinks resemble camera shutter clicks, brief interruptions in what we see through the viewfinder. We can never see everything at once, never perceive the world in its entirety. We live in fragments, snap-shot moments that are only partially captured before they fade. This reminds us that reality is both continuous and fleeting. It's as much about what we miss as what we see, with the gaps filled with perception and contemplation.
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Listen to poem:
Letters congeal, to words.
Words anneal to sentences,
which tell a story,
painted as images,
imagined in the mind's eye,
trying to emulate what
the eye sees briefly,
on the see-saw.
A glint of sunlight,
caught slanted and sharp
on windowpane reflected,
stabbed in pain
with shad of glass.
The edges of a leaf
curl up, roll inward.
Rust-red throws of dying,
shriveling in sun, drying.
A flash of white
a bird's wing,
cutting the sky blue,
with knife
slash streak.
A thin line of snaky smoke
curls up from the lakeside,
as syrupy ripples
caress the still water,
the breeze dozes momentarily,
distracted, quelled asleep
by calmness and quietude.
Leaves shiver,
as dawn wind awakens
with a yawn, cough and sigh.
The leaf's veins and blade
tremble, dew silvered
readying for the vane fight ahead.
A cat, frozen mid-step,
paws paused, on hold,
its yellow eyes
locked frozen with yours,
neither dares to move.
Raindrops one and all,
fall, spit, splat on windowpane
painting tiny sparkling reflections,
before the scene is overdubbed
with rivulets descending
gathering drops in flows
of colorless lymph leaching.
The eyes and mind catch it all:
snap-shot fragments,
images and thoughts,
scenery and words,
held for a moment,
in a blink or two
in the mind's eye,
for perception,
contemplation,
then gone.
Copyright © John Anderson | Year Posted 2024
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