Ocular Spring

(Thanks to MCC for the inspiration.)

 
The windows are dirty.

But still, low in the sky,

a silver-sun cleans the edges,

the world sprayed with Windex,

polished hard with a soft cloth.

Out in the garden,

emerging stalks etch blue air,

like the first time

you don a pair of glasses, 

the new prescription

cuts a sharp line,

green leaves outlined

in fine-point ink.

Later in the car, 

you lumber down 

winter-pocked roads

where strobes flick and flash. 

Light

hits air,

hits trees

hits air.

You wish the visor hung lower,

for a baseball cap,

anything to block 

the brash blaze of horizon glare,

before trees leaf out and

tint the bleach with shade.

You squint

as back-light marries

a white magnolia

branches hanging heavy,

the way limbs do

during a wet spring snow.

Tomorrow, the light will change. 

A storm that never arrived,

but washed the air anyway,

will have floated out to sea. 

All you’ll have left
of an afternoon
burnished to high-gloss
are words that try —

reminding you, perhaps,

but forever failing to capture

anything close to the essence.

Copyright Liza Carens Salerno, May 2013