Unlike my parents, ever since birth
My vision has always been 20/20.
Recently, I have noticed small letters
And signs start to fade.
As if they were returning themselves
To the wall, as a kind of ghost image;
With all I’d seen, read and witnessed
Abruptly regifted to somebody else’s
Bright page. As your sight starts to bow,
Hiding itself behind glasses,
Do the previous things become novels
To be never looked at, or read?
I can see the light play on grass
At Seven O Clock in the morning,
But as my fade begins, will I be moving
Too quickly towards the boundaries
Of the dead? Soon, I will have to submit myself,
It is clear, to examination’s blur and aid vision,
And in that way signal aging along with the concision
That comes with late life.
I will possibly see less and less
And yet what I will perceive will be balanced
By the memories and by writing,
As if the act of recalling, itself, was a wife.
There will be the companionship of the past,
As if one’s own experience could be married.
As I consider this, look; my parents! Lives lost,
Their pale glasses are immaculately glazed
By starlight.
David Erdos 4/8/17
Illustration Nick Victor