A blind girl walks up the street, passing by
where I sit beneath the cool white columns
of the porch, so civilized against the emerald
blades of grass hustling up to meet the sun
in bunches, the maple leaves still partly closed
and so thin the light cuts through them like
tissue paper.
I would still know, were I blind, that today
is the first day of summer. Eighty degrees in May
and who could miss it? Smoke wafts from barbecues
in every direction, music streams from second-floor
windows, flip flops slap carelessly
against bare heels. All the noises that were kept
tucked away inside for the winter with layers
of New England politeness,
have been released.
I would know, but I would stick my young face
between the bars of the porch, wait for the wisp
of hair on my forehead to be blown back by the wind,
wait in vain for the green grass to break through
the blindness as it broke through the seed coat
only weeks ago--cotyledon, root, shoot, radicle--
surely if from branches defined by their icicles
could come blossoms thicker than sunflower seeds,
if the bundled coffee- and kleenex-clutching
students hurrying grimly from library to class
could become the sunbathers pressing their thumbs
to each others' shouders to check their burns,
sprawled and giggling on every lawn--
then blindness would be just a matter of time,
a seasonal nuisance, like allergies or SAD,
soon to disappear on its own.
Is it wrong, then, to shiver at the thought
of even a temporary loss? To stare at the blind girl
(what? she can't see me do it) and stop
myself before the empathy threatens my sense
of reality? Look around at all she's missing--
the puppy's tail, the bumper sticker on a car--
and not pity her, or sympathize, but draw back
as one does from bad luck, from something so terrible
it would change the way I see?
