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