Now I see

The doctor shone the light into each eye of mine,

seeming to enjoy his searching,

with murmurs of wonder and obvious delight.

Then he sat back and looked at me,

‘There are wonderful things to see there…’

his face and whole demeanour

supplementing what he’d said.

 *

And then he looked again, took his time,

‘Beautiful colours, your eye is a picture

of how things are, inside you…’

*

I sat patiently as he explained this to me, thinking —

All these years I’d seen,

with eyes my window on the world,

two orbs that so much helped to make me…me,

yet I’d been blind to those inner wonders

which only then had been revealed to me.

 *

Of course there was much more;

he had but seen physical,

with his penetrating little light up close,

illuminating my illuminators...

He could not infiltrate the intangible,

see the abstract thought processes of my brain,

make the invisible recognisable…

 *

I know there is much more to me

than daily ordinary visible me,

pleasing or displeasing as the case may be,

to those in charge of supervising,

manipulating, enjoying, or enchanting,

all other forms of observing me.

 *

Now if he’d had a light to penetrate my soul,

to explain my true self to me,

I wonder, what would he have told me then?

*

Dennis Crompton © 1995

(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)