Thirty-Two Years Later

[71degrees]

She pulls her eyes
out of their sockets,
holds them tightly
in each hand,
and tells me,

"See the things
I have seen,
the wonders.
This is my gift
to you."

I hold them close to me,
try to look through them.

I suppose it is the law
of nature their warm sight
fades a bit to dry and hollow—

But these eyes have seen
all the fragments of everything
good and bad ever seen—

my hoary silence, the fat
of the day, a declension
of starlings against our sky.