A New Set of Eyes

-for Sara

Give me the words to describe the blue I see

when my eyes are barely cracked.

Give me the tools to plaster my body to the desert wall

and watch for centuries as the world is eroded into new meaning.

Give me the day to “fill with bravery” and

“not shrink from celebrating it”

Give me myself, that I may emit my power,

which lives in the “transparent boundaries” between all beings.

Give me these things I need before I can, with honor,

sit before the hearth of my family, and bless our meal with the holy song

we wrote by the notes of music we found

on the sky decomposing underground.

Give me a new set of eyes, with which I see color

for the first time, and gasp with astonishment

as I realize what I am.

After “The Poet” by Ralph Waldo Emerson