I can only begin to imagine, vicariously,
what it is like to cross the border
into the land of deafness, hear all you knew
fade and garble, need vision to see
what a speaker is saying, wonder why
songs you thought you knew now
have lyrics you do not recognize at all.
My wife is on this journey and now
has a cochlear implant which will restore
her ability to hear sound, but she
will have to relearn what it means,
voices sounding so different until
the brain reprograms those sounds
into voices from her memory library.
And I, with near blindness in one eye
have entered my own new world,
bigger type, bigger screens, brighter
lights and hope and wonder if one day
I will have an implant and fortunately
will need to learn to see all over again.