Oracle at Horseshoe Canyon
You watch with empty eyes
that never close
And for how long now
And what have you seen
Are you a lawgiver?
Do you sit in judgment?
You have no mouth
to speak an answer
Only eyes: empty and wide
like lenses that reveal the universe;
Not narrow and busy
for labeling good and evil.
They’re not concerned with
“thou shalts” or “shall nots”
Only with vastness and
the thing-in-itself.
And they hold me -
your empty eyes
In the stillness
that only the desert brings
And I feel them open me.
They gather my soul
At its edges
for examination.
What do you see? I ask.
You have no mouth
to speak an answer.
Only eyes and you make them mine
And you show me
And I see,
as if through a glass,
clearly,
Things as they really are:
wounded
and afraid
and also
the death that I resist.
And my tears fill your eyes:
I want you to take them
from me.
Nevertheless,
I look on until it’s done -
Until you take your eyes from me
And give me back my fleshy pair
That look on you again and search you
(tall and red and hovering)
But find no trace of my vision:
It is gone from your empty eyes
They kept no record
of what was shown.
But I, I go away
Back into the desert
Unable to unsee
what I have seen.
© Scott Edgar, 2023
