Wild swans on the Hudson again:
one flies across our bow black
beak cocked like a pointer.
*****
A long bracket of geese overhead
clouded in late May rain eyes to the
north. All come back again.
*****
I’m thinking clear sight is hard to come by
standing by the drugstore Magnivision rack
contemplating niceties of standardized diopter.
I remember the times I could just about see
the larger protozoa with my naked eye—
much improved with M.S. Lougheed’s microscope,
Nels’s best gift to him & handed down to me & David
because even at lowest power I could see
the ruffling cilia of a paramecium
rhythmic as the oars on a racing scull
and the spiky sphere of volvox
rolling like a compass rose under motor:
traffic was usually brisk & purposeful
all the way to the edge of the field.
*****
Here’s how we get around:
charts, lists, waypoints, spreadsheets,
oil paint, “The Joshua Tree,” bricolage, myth,
compasses, music scores, maps, red nuns,
blueprints, binoculars, liturgy, Loran,
Kaddish, chord progressions, fantasy, rules,
Nordic Track, renderings, R.E.M., kites,
prognostication, linguistic trees, muse spoor
& dead reckoning. Telescopes are new this year.
*****
Quite peculiar, Mama,
a retirement gift of improved optics
to Linda St. Clair: our least
retired most rigorous visionary,
eyes toward God, the eagle tree.
*****
Sanders on telescopes: You can’t see
shit, but they sure do look good.
*****
So what’s this telescope for?
It’s our family’s totem
a common history
& combined view
held, beheld & passed on
a shared lens which multiplies
vision elegant as the compound
eye of a fly that ancient machine
each facet holds part of the picture.
*****
Think of us fixed at the same moment
on Nauset, Mt. Baker, Skaket Beach,
Shelter Island and the China Sea
each of our glasses like the spokes of a wheel
whose rudder guides our separate journeys
to bring us together again and again
or think of the wild swans on the Hudson:
time after time we return to each other
like migratory birds who know the way home.