The boy without eyeglasses
stumbles over his father’s thrift.
He might be a fool dancing
out of wildwood,
who learns to listen
with his skin. Does he hear
the trees’ vestigial
breathing, rhythmic as waves
in the cambium, water
against some shore a thousand
miles away? All about him
the singing throats lift, interminable
as sky and brief as nuthatch,
chickadee. Of course
a near-blind child knows night
is waiting at home, in the crumbs
of supper. But first
he’ll scrape his knees raw
from playing at vision, stub
his toes against the roots that rise
hard against him unexpected
as a rake left lying.
He’ll get his fill of looking
for butternuts as if
they grew here, a whorled
meat he can taste inside
cracked shells, as if
he’d ever seen
one.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem