Close Work - July 27 2021

 

Close Work

July 27 2021

I am bad at distance.

There is a theory

that short-sighted people

read a lot as kids.

Too much close work.

And perhaps on the dreamy side, as well,

losing ourselves in books

imagining alternate lives.

Because living in your head

tends to constrict the world,

a cozy circle

closing-in around you

as your gaze turns increasingly inward.

Who needs to see out

when there are microcosms here?

So I can read without my glasses

but squint when people approach,

missing faces

forgetting names

delinquent at saying hello.

They think I'm addled

or simply cold,

but should know it's my eyes

and that my mind sometimes wanders.

That glasses fog

slip down my nose

get lost, or left behind.

So I've become accomplished

at the royal wave, generic hi,

passing people by

with a nod and a smile.

Myopic, but not metaphorically.

Just bad at distance

for which I sincerely apologize.

I'm thinking about glasses. Because, like the scissors I recently wrote about in Lost, a pair has gone inexplicably missing: 2 singular events when something so completely disappeared I feel it must have literally dematerialized. I have utter scorn for the paranormal and woo-woo explanations for things, but have to admit that on these 2 occasions, when every rational if improbable explanation has failed, I've found myself tempted to resort to this sort of magical thinking.

Anyway, it was time for a new pair. I booked an appointment with the optometrist, and this got me thinking about refraction and corrective lenses. This poem is the result.

I'm also terrible at names, and often explain my lapses by saying I couldn't see them at first without my glasses. (Which also buys me extra time to try to remember who they are!)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Turns out the glasses were found the next day. So nothing supernatural after all!