Limitations

I lie on my back
in the mostly deserted
November park.
Sun beats red against
my closed eyelids.
On opening them, the sky
is fantastically blue--
blue-bright beyond dimension
until a needle and thread
of jet tells lens how to focus,
tells brain how to read the sky,
guess at distance, adjust for glare.

Watching the jet trail dissolve
over my patch of blue, I notice
floaters in my left eye, clear circles
(like cells under a microscope)
in fixed configuration, sliding, always,
away toward the side of sight.

We are always looking, aren't we,
through our own lenses? Watching
through the floaters in our eyes. Listening
through the tinnitus in our ears.
We get nothing straight . . .
only a million refractions
of glory.