Unpatterned Vision Poem by gershon hepner

Encyclopedias, Greek and Latin,
a Baedeker that guides,
impose on vision their own pattern
in which true beauty hides.
You ought to walk in forests, see
the flowers, birds and trees,
the life beneath the canopy,
and open fields and seas.
Survey your own back garden where,
observing change of season,
you taste the freshness of the air
with eyes and not with reason,
for in a folio’s frigid fustian
interpretations thrive,
spontaneously, without combustion,
extinguishing the live
grandiloquence of grass that grows
and song heard in the skies.
Without the outdoor eye and nose
it’s folly to be wise.


(6/8/97,5/25/07)