Recognition

Without it,
an eclipsed eye,
                         no beginning.
 
With it,
a quartz crystal on the throat you touch,
                                                                     skies without end.
 

What do you see
in the mirror shaped like man?
 

A talking head?
                       A qualm-inducing holy man?
                       A like-minded neighbor?
                                              An icon
 

of old religion,
of the passing world?
 
Hair, teeth, nails—
a body leaning toward solipsism
                                       like your own?
 

Our first apprehension— 
not learned or chosen or reverent— 
has a name like sight,  
like the eye itself: recognition.   
Opened white. Unresisting.  

Somewhere, closer to the heart
it is a remembrance,
a coming forward to greet.

You are chosen then,
like a farmer             pulling his grapes,
not the other way.

 
Before reason,
without faith,
                                  your eyelids rise 
and unfurl.
 
As sound follows footsteps.
 
                                                   Joy, the open hand.
 
                                     The way paper
                       recedes over flame.
                                                                                       

Vanishes.