Blind Man’s Bluff
What is this game? I am thirty-three,
and my eyes are covered up for play.
The world is solid black, my movements
slow & clumsy with fear. All around
my floating head, voices chatter & laugh.
Tree roots line the ground, dangerous
protuberances, desiring my blood.
At a distance, I hear water falling,
it sounds uncommonly happy, it sounds
like someone peeing. I could stay
this way forever, or at least
for a few minutes. My own daughter
giggles when I stumble, and I wave
my hands to catch her hair: sweet web,
tying my heart to my body
so it dares not take flight.
I don’t know anymore
if the grass is green here; mostly I sense
bare, flaccid soil, decaying leaves.
What chemicals created this relentless
natural discontent? Is there a cure?
Old desires for wandering flood upward,
through jagged white bone, never coming
to fruition. This tender moment
of blindness is welcome relief.
Certainly if I were to break an arm,
a leg, I would be taken out
of this awful inertia. The laws of physics
are absolute, giving no small comfort
to a homeless spirit like mine.
There is nothing like the delight
of a very young child — to fracture
such a short-lived spell
would bring the greatest weariness of all.
Yet, if despair is the only real sin,
I am surely damned. In the darkness, I reach.
As I grope her small round face, she speaks,
and I feel the soft lips move
under my fingertips: you found me, Mommy.
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 