Without Seeing

Without Seeing

It isn’t now or this patch of blue autumn,
light skimmed like milk without substance
(its ghost on my lips). Or the way trees darken
before the sky, the way light slants through
pines (my neighbor’s lamp or the moon). It’s
not the way night feels when I walk in March, 

when snow melts into mud, and I smell grass
again; when I know, without seeing, that
tight buds open high in the branches.
It’s not the expected order of things but
moments of other (when something startles
me into knowing something other). Tonight, 

wind pulled leaves from the sky to my feet
and, suddenly (without warning) a deer leapt
from the thicket behind me—leapt and
disappeared—past me as I passed myself,
my body filled with absence, with air,
a perfect mold of the light gone through it.

Author: Adele Kenny

Photo: Aaron Burden on Unsplash