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Were you born looking
or did you hone that ’cause you had to?
Did your eyes tire of all they saw,
from the center of beauty to the soul of hell?
Many of your words,
born by looking,
even more than by feeling
Looking, looking,
seeing, noting
looking harder,
over and under
Were you born with a single eye,
focused on everything being there
side-by-side with everything else?
You, ever on the inside,
often, always on the outside
looking
Poet, carrying the burden of vision
the chore of having to reveal
exhilaration or complication,
tragedy or imagination,
courage, irony, deep despair
everything out there
Poet, never without an assignment
never off the hook
from looking
But there’d be so much less to see
if you did not do what you certainly must
if you did not trust that what you saw
was so much more, so very much more
than any image your open eyes took
as you moved through life
having a look
Galen Kelly
8/1/2021