I Look Up from My Book and Out at the World through Reading Glasses by Diane Seuss

I Look Up from My Book and Out at the World through Reading Glasses

The world, italicized.

Douglas fir blurs into archetype,

a black vertical with smeared green arms.

The load of pinecones at the top,

a brown smudge which could be anything: a wreath

of moths, a rabbit strung up

like a flag.

All trees are trees.

Death to modifiers.

A smear of blue, a smear of gold that could be a haystack,

a Cadillac, or a Medal of Honor without a neck to hang upon.

I know the dog killed something today, but it’s lost in fog.

A small red splotch in a band of monochromatic green.

And now, the mountain of bones is only a mountain capped in snow.

It’s a paradise of vagaries.

No heartache.

Just an eraser smudge,

smoke-gray.

All forms, the man wrote, tend toward blur.