Why I Need Glasses

Trotting home, I flow toward globes

I guess are hedges, not green dogs.

Sunday's Tribune flaps under my arm

As I huff faster down a floating road

Of blobs, a kindergarten painting's

Slapdash riot of a road-some houses

Lumped from snow, some red as apples.

Cars budge by, drivers like potatoes.

I'd keep the world I've got, slurred

So it's simple to refract a bundled man

Into a mailbox, a panther's shadow

Back into a tossing copper bush.

I'd rush upon the random miracles

For the perpetually confused, those

Slag stones bursting into crows,

Gas balls of flame becoming beer lamps

As I pass. But someone raps a horn

And waves-I bob and wave, scanning

A cloudy pool for any face that knows me,

Knows I'm obstinately blind. Call me

A catcher scrambling for that wild pitch,

A bull decoyed by every rolling blur.

I rage to see-as when some sudden

Gust of wind wakes me and interrupts

That slow, erotic dream. No matter how

Long I lie still, I'm sure I'll never

Get to see my dark companion, reaching

For me on that hillside I almost remember.