Less is More - March 5 2025

 

Less is More

March 5 2025

The light, as evening fades

is too soft for shadows,

and as it weakens

the world shrinks.

I can tell it’s darker

but can’t see the darkening,

know when it’s night

but not when it started.

Yet as sight dims

my senses come alive.

Sounds surround me

and sound more loudly,

go miles more

on the cooling air.

Even smell

  —  the primal sense

that has become, in us

stunted and ignored  —

has a freshly sharpened edge;

like the vigilance you feel

when bolting awake

in an unfamiliar bed.

My feet stumble down the path

feeling their way.

Leaves brush my face

before they’ve been seen.

And a cobweb's sticky strands

insistently cling,

gossamer filaments

too fine to see.

Even taste is triggered;

the salty sweat

beading down my upper lip

as I forge through the bush.

How odd

that struck blind

I’m more aware and alert,

more alive to the world.

It’s as if we are enlarged by constraint,

forced to improvise

by deprivation.

We instruct young writers

that less is more;

the things left unsaid,

the line

omitted or erased.

(Although it takes time to learn,

and clearly, I haven’t learned it well).

Less, because one trusts the reader

to fill the empty space

make the poem hers.

So is more also less

in real life

out in the world?

In much the way that darkness enlarges me,

that sightlessness, surprisingly

doesn’t leave me blind.

How, compelled to see differently

I become more engaged  . . .

more aware  . . .

more alive.