I need sight like a mantis shrimp, each eye sweeping
its own span of ocean, or eagles who quickly shift
their focus, see eight times farther than humans.
To scan the street through eyes of the man
I pass this morning curled on the sidewalk grate,
seeing us from our ankles up as we side-step
litter, kick coffee cups into the gutter. To view
the past too, with multi-coned eyes, all its scorched
and silken colors. To stare ahead at century’s end,
half the world’s glaciers melted, with sight
like owls, whose eyes let light in again
after it’s passed through – a second chance
to navigate darkness. To trace the path
dawn didn’t take this morning, muzzled by rain,
how sun sneaks between a different set of clouds.
This poem first appeared in Cider Press Review (2024).
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Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press, 2022) and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books, 2023). Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Banyan Review, Feral, Vox Populi and numerous other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. Visit her at www.joannedurham.com.
