Watch the eyes: they reflect scars
that long since faded from the flesh
still mark the hard survivor’s face
with phantom traces, and though less
pronounced with each new moment’s span
can in some lights, and moods, reveal
the inner content of the heart
that needs no words to speak its pain.
Watch the eyes: in caverns not
so deep or treacherous, the lives
of countless treasure-seeking men
have been cut short, or been sold cheap,
their worth exchanged for one more breath,
a single ray of hopeful light,
the trickle of a hidden stream
to quench some secret, speechless thirst.
Watch the eyes: they can reveal
some lost agenda of the damned
that waits in infinite repose
for hapless fools to seek its depth,
and for an instant, finding bliss,
to think it some eternal shore
where ships with ancient tattered sails
find moorage from the wrathful storm.
Watch the eyes: their surface shines
with the mad heart’s reflected wish,
and can reveal to those who look
what purpose drives the mind to live.
24 AUG 2005
