Eye Contact
It’s not that the airplane is small,
but that it is far above us.
The sky is not a tarp, not a blue line
suspended across the top
edge of a sheet of paper. It isn’t even
blue, but appears that way
because of the atmosphere capping
the Earth, the planet’s cornea.
And your cornea. This place is strewn
with corneas strung up before
us like wet bedsheets pinned to a line
stretched through the yard.
Eye contact lets us speak privately,
walkie talkies with channels
that seem silent to all but us. Do you
copy. Honk if you hear me.
Oh, I love this chance to consider perception and communication via your poem. Love the corneas as bedsheets, certainly a new image and way of thinking about it all!!
ReplyDeleteCan only express my awe for your always new ways of looking at what we take for granted, of contrasting what is with what we perceive it to be. Oh, that image of corneas!
ReplyDeleteYou kill me with your cleverness....I always try very hard to make eye contact with the passengers on the window isle of planes that fly above me...and yet when I am up there I know that I cannot see. I am going to wear a telescopic lens that would allow me to do so.
ReplyDeleteThis poem has to be pinned to a wall. xx
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"This place is strewn
ReplyDeletewith corneas strung up before
us like wet bedsheets pinned to a line
stretched through the yard."
Well done, bravo!
Honk! Love this one, Hannah.
ReplyDeleteWhat an image, of corneas strung up before us. I'll never see the same way again!
ReplyDeleteu give eyes and seeing a new meaning.
ReplyDelete