Doug Anderson: The Eye of the Heart

Opens in sleep when there are no fingers
to close it. As if it were dead.
It is open all day as well but only speaks
in the dark when the skull’s eyes flutter.
I have often seen the barge that comes
through the underground river’s tunnel
arrive and then unload its cargo
of unknowable things. But all day
this eye cares for us, leads us to love
if only blindly, if only to remind us it’s there.
And then when we are defenseless
in sleep we see the magnitude of life.
The cornucopia of things we deny ourselves,
trip over, fail to see, refuse, or run from.
It is a terrible thing to be alive
and see with the unprotected heart.
Not for the timid, or those who would
stake out their years in respectability.
To be alive completely, now there is
a dragon to be ridden without reins.

—
Copyright 2016 Doug Anderson