Audio Poem Day 11 - Ode to the Eye
#Nationalpoetrymonth #Kirkwoodspeaks #eyeball #poem
This poem comes in three installations. 1) An attempt to recite the poem at a key location in Dallas (which is weird and cool, but I forgot the ending.) 2) the written form, and a link in the comments to an illustrated video that my daughter Kayla worked with me to create. Enjoy all three.
Patterned on the backmost curvature of eye, The great Retina-Dome, Rod and Cone—Inner-Cup Coliseum captures the illumined world and decodes with the aid of some many million R & C sense-cell minicams.
Do you remember rod and cone cells?
Bio 101 Refresher:
Consider your eye in form
A lollipop, with
lash attached and leering from the bone
like the part of a clam which shows,
between the parted shells:
Stereo tadpoles
bulbous in the skull;
tails streaming backward
at your brain …
Consider your eye, this time within:
Mini-twins
of the Houston Astrodome.
(This works best while lying on your back)
The spanning bubble roof with the skylight hole
corresponds to your iris,
The coliseum wrap with arena base –
your retina.
Billy Graham is preaching.
Every inch of stadium is full.
The CONE-heads in the center all wear
colored shades and sip a chosen hue:
lemonade, cyan, or red.
The RODgers on the rim
are colorblind and love dim rooms.
Now do you remember Rod and Cone cells?
The greater part of poetry would celebrate
the lesser part of any eye:
A marble-colored muscle, shining life
and riveting our gaze.
But …
REAL seeing is a corporate vision.
The sum of each myopic rod and cone,
Siphoning a pixel, feeding a mosaic.
Remember –
Your first act of faith
is believing what you see.
Ode to the Eye.