Through Aging Eyes

You used to see me...
or, no, you really didn’t, did you?
You used to look at me...
well, no, it wasn’t that, either...
You used to look through me
even though i sat right in front of you
in a painfully orange jacket
waving my crooked hand
in front of your glassy, daydreaming eyes
the light behind them fading
overwhelmed by woes
you’ve always refused to recognize
as ardently as you refused
to see me.

Week after week
i turned my melting features
to you as you
stumbled blindly along
staring into the horizon
still searching
for something that you learned long ago
doesn’t exist
and drowning in the trance
you call your reality.

What was it
that burned your sight
to blackened light
so that all you really see
is shadows
floating along like dark
unfriendly ghosts?
Why is it
that you look past my eyes
sagging ever lower
like an old hound’s
as though i’m a page in one of those books
where abstract swirls burst into secret pictures
before your very eyes
like magic?

Maybe it’s the same reason
you used to lie face-up in the rain
breathing deeply through your gaping mouth
the naked oak towering protectively over you
its solitary leaf trembling
reluctantly keeping your secret...
yes, i know about that.
Your youthful eyes
may be blind
but mine
still find
that when you cry
you cry
                alone.

Do you think I’ve seen
too many sunsets
to remember that it will rise
and that the night
is always longest
in winter’s cold cold core
when the birds have all abandoned you?

You used to look through me
but i could always see you.

and i never even existed
                in your muddled
                me-first mind.