Frederic Stuart (Skip) Leeds is a writer, musician, former Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Wright State University, and a Heartfulness practitioner and trainer. His poetry has appeared in Mock Turtle Zine, Pages Literary Journal, and JMECD, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

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Skip Leeds

SKIP LEEDS<hr>You so love &nbsp; Or fear &nbsp; but have never seen&nbsp; &nbsp; this worldYou are not blind As least as this world knows it –&nbsp; &nbsp; your eyes soak in the swarming particles of light &nbsp; your brain invites the currents &nbsp; comes alive in voltages Your mind, though…that is quite another matter.You are not deaf Whatever grasps the air&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; to squeeze, to stretch the space around its atoms &nbsp; &nbsp; comes in through your Buddha-doors &nbsp; &nbsp; to beat such rhythms on your eardrums &nbsp; &nbsp; that – through miracles still half-guessed at –&nbsp; You know voices. Footsteps.&nbsp; Motors. Music.You have no scent of it.&nbsp; No taste or touch of it &nbsp; no matter where you are &nbsp;(and where you are has yet to be discovered). Imagine now a vision &nbsp; panoramic Imagine how you see at once&nbsp; &nbsp; a sphere – 360 all around –&nbsp; Not just around – and not just now &nbsp; but later. And before.Not just space &nbsp; but the vacuum in its place. What could you call the world before this &nbsp; but a faint and flattened photograph?A poem like this should not&nbsp; &nbsp; end out in riddles –&nbsp; &nbsp; no drudgery of koans &nbsp; no conundrums&nbsp; &nbsp; no untethered paradoxes And it surely should resist &nbsp; any impulse to advise… &nbsp; …but if you’ve read this far&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; then you know why&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; it will end in just this way:Open – but first gently close – your eyes.&nbsp; &nbsp;