Sharing Sight with Monet

It happens this way …

Thanks to Jacinta, Petra, and Aimee  for publishing “Eye-minded” in the Spring 2020 issue of their glorious magazine. Snapdragon: a journal of art and healing is a subscription-based publication out of Winston-Salem, NC that has been sharing art, poetry, and prose for the past six years

To my poet friends: link up with them to receive their themed calls for submissions.

With their permission, I’d like to share my poem with you.

 

Eye-minded

…my poor eyesight makes me see everything in a complete fog.  – Monet

The only things I hear this summer night

are the rhythms of these lines

and my rambling mind wondering

how Monet would see my backyard.

 

If I slip my glasses off, his fog is mine.

Yellow daisies blur behind purple Blazing Stars.

White aster-clusters entwine.

Hydrangea pinks blemish above a dozen shapes

of shade beyond a smudged maple tree.

 

Beautiful, Monet would say:

this scene oozing through myopic haze.

I agree. Impressions have their charm.

 

Yesterday, the doctor said my eyes

are younger than my seventy-four.

Pressure good. Lenses holding strength.

Faint cataracts still faint. And yet …

what if one day I wake to colors melting

like Monet’s? Would I be content to trace

smudges of light reflecting on the backyard pool?

Would I remember the flicker’s orange tail,

the bumblebees feasting on lavender?

 

Since summer is on the run,

I’ll put my glasses on and mark memories

like Monet labeled tubes of paint.

I’ll even catalogue the hostas’ late leaf-scorch,

the moss-nibbled edges of lawn,

the ants circling crumbs on the patio.