STRANGE BEAUTY

There is a strange beauty
in the slow loss of sight,
for there is a progressive
transition, a discovery
of much that went unheard,
unfelt, missing in the glare
of the need to see, to categorize
and organize, memories
neatly arranged in an array
of curated visual files.


But without sight what once
was cast aside as noise is
an intricate tapestry of sound
and undistracted, you begin
to see the individual threads
to see deeply into the art
and craft of the unknown weaver.


Without sight, you so often
store images in two dimensions
but now requiring touch,
everything is three dimensional
of necessity and the world is
infinitely more complex
and yes beautiful than you recalled.


And the darkness of night, which
marked a border that dared not
be fully crossed grows meaningless
and hours once lost may again
now demand to be lived.

First published in Bard and Prose, June 2022
https://bardandprose.com/category/poetry/

DECISION TIME

Checking the calendar, I see
that today I must make
a profound decision that will
affect my life for years to come.

I am certain it will not be
a simple decision, important
decisions seldom are, and this
offers multiple but no easy choices.

I have long taken the facile way
around the issue, a straightforward
“same as everyone else does”
approach that has gotten me by.

But it is time for a change, so I
am left with organizing my library
by month and day of birth of author,
year not counting, first name initial,

or, and here is where I am leaning
given my love of the film High
Fidelity, arranging them in
perfect autobiographical order.