Half a view

I cannot paint a picture,

So perhaps my words will do.

I stood in a field at sunset

Alone, looking west.

The ground was mostly flooded

From spring rains that had passed

The sun had just now gone,

Dipped below the horizon

Before I had arrived.

I cannot see landscapes,

The features are blurred and bruised.

I used to wish I might,

But the effort strains my eyes.

And though my glasses help,

To give a sense of self

To let me sense a world

Like everybody else,

There is always a strain.

So I stood in a field, with the sunset gone.

I surveyed the land with glass eyes on.

And really, I was grateful for the details.

The branches of some closer trees intertwined prettily,

Flooded pools on the ground reflected columns in the clouds,

But some character it felt to me was filtered by my long worn screen.

And suddenly, urgently, I felt the need to see, just see.

So I took off the glasses.

It was cool wind that first hit my eyes,

And then, colour.

Colour without sharp borders, without shapes I knew to think were beautiful.

It felt odd, and then clean, then weightless.

I remember I blinked a lot. Where had this much colour been?

All strains departed, my heart eased, colours swelled in place.

I sank into the landscape.

The straight beams of the sun had wandered on,

But they had left their waltzing cousin

Who moved on nature’s features and favoured them

With shades that daylight never permitted.

The heath grass wore an orange haze, it smoked to me, it burnt with aspiration,

Budding leaves that had been individually shy to my crystalline eye now rushed together,

A tapestry in young unlaboured green, thrown up by stretching wood.

I saw everything alive move together in the evening’s breath.

Blurred blades and branches skipped,

So that the earth’s whole colour rippled

And was shot through with momentary flares of orange and yellow.

Every shade was instantly new,

Unmatched and unimagined under a sighing pink sky.

Oh and that sky, those skies, surrounded me completely.

Even at my feet, pooled vaults of blackened silver

Reflected back impressions of heaven’s precious portrait.

The days dark clouds had spent all their temper on the earth,

And now shed off grey skins and lumbering strides,

To run swiftly west into fiery brightness.

The fastest streams still kissed the sun,

And threw back an unbearably joyful red,

Which scattered on cloud tips to wash the following in pink.

Dyed red banners were being carried into a glowing yellow frontier

Which was yielding to a rich orange settlement

Even as the blanket of rose petals fell backwards into twilight

And blossomed into deeper violets made of midnight.

It was a forge of beauty and I became held,

Pierced, remade and overfilled.

Vision before had never moved me like this,

Light couldn’t have bled the heart or shattered ribs.

But now, in unbound hues I had a true reflection,

That made twins of joy and desperation

So that sudden longing drew new lenses for me,

To whet a need to express this half view of majesty.

That half view still holds me and feeds me dreams,

I was found, unlooked for, in mosaics no else could see.