Learning to Use the Stick

Let's say you're a blind boy in the street

He moves, and you toward him,

the traffic against you both. Not knowing

what's to come and when you'll fall

makes you fall to the curb and refuse to move.

It doesn't matter. You'll have to get up

and learn again the town isn't empty

just crossing to the other side

to make room in your stretch of nothingness.

Blindness is anything but that—

it's not black velvet or a locked closet either,

but a place you imagine is time itself

where ideas are as real as the lamp you knock over

again. You'll have to get up

and start learning to keep your eyes closed

for the seeing who can't bear to see them.

The hardest is learning you're not alone,

the nothing you maneuver through

is the something we're all born into—

Now, let's say I take you up

on your offer of coffee sometime.

I walk blindly into your story. I'm a character

there. I walk blindly into your body.

I'm a character there, and language is

the stick, or faith, or violence, or love is.

Learning to use the stick, tapping the walk,

gently stirring and parting the air, making

doorways to push yourself through,

learning there's no use looking down.