Lost Landscapes

And the blind whisper to each other
in thin voices. They walk the borders
of day, every street a new

language in a landscape already
lost. Hours slide by
smooth as polished chrome

and old habits are lovely
with memory coating fingertips,
feet tracing the pavement's rough

surface, and gravity always underfoot.
Faces turned toward sun, they
drink the rich, sweet light and

dream raw dreams inside their world
of black dazzle. In survivor's sad
reckonings, they conjure names with one

hand and release them with the other,
balancing on tightropes of sound.
And always a honed silence

as they carry solitude up the stairs
where time is a slow thought
and forever just another possibility.

They ask me to describe darkness.
I begin with the charred edge of the sea,
winds trapped in caves, a wheel turning

away from itself. I have gone into
the hollow place behind my eyes,
to the outer edge of sight

moving on white lizard feet. No longer
blinded by the visible, the world is
nearer in the dark.

 

© Ruth Daigon