On Consideration of the Eye

The occipital lobe, whereupon images

from the optic nerve

are projected, apparently,

is like some kind of homestyle movie screen

set up in the living room, that nexus in the neck

where bundled nervewires cross, right to left

left to write, for the majority  

and it’s here, in equivalent chirality 

the sensible world we touch, chafe, caress

is rendered first upside down

and backwards, broadcast

via the optic through the bottleneck

to a shim on the wall at the base of the skull

where the world is righted, set back on its feet

in some Herculean neurological act

extravagant, to say the least

and I’m thinking about

Plato’s shifting shadows:

immense public relations firms, cosmological in scope

Godel’s Theorem, the world’s encryption

the way my left eye sees the shape of the poem,

my right the sequence of words,

the texture of black ink on the white page, blurred

stacked tight as a brick, the wall on my left

uneven on the right, the pulse of music—

I’m thinking about my handwriting as an adult,

grown slowly less assured.See, I’m not really seeing at all