Context

Context

by Kevin Cahill

you look through a window

your breath collects on the pane,

or pausing at an entryway just ajar

your temple presses lightly against a doorjamb,

or peering into his eyes

your hair falls forward,

shrouds your face,

your world gets shuttered down,

not everything is for looking through

and not every aperture opens

on to a field of view,

and sometimes, as you wipe the smudges

from your lenses,

you may wonder about even wider angles,

so you pull back, get a little distance -

but that way there is only one perspective,

the unblinking blue eye, Earth,

staring back at you …coherent, cold, absolute.

back you come, in tight and close,

you dwell furtively in doorways

you linger by window shades,

faces fly by on the bus,

it all comes to you piecemeal

blindingly so,

you’re so blinkered,

so bound and bordered,

so constrained,

but nothing can prevent your looking

or your being intrigued:

a frame holds nothing in

and everything out -

you never feel where you are,

until, focused by necessity,

you are looking through something else.

October 19, 2006