Glaucoma

 

Glaucoma

 

Eyesight’s going ...

 

Each year the lenses thicken

To unscramble the flurry of words

Either read or written;

 

A discursive Morse Code:

Pictograms, hieroglyphics,

Tattoos, graffiti, facebook, woad.

 

Though looking back seems clear enough,

If you don’t stare too hard

At all the peripheral stuff.

 

But one always glossed over the small print,

What the packet really contained:

Those illegible, inedible ingredients.

 

Still, it’s in the failure to deliver

That life takes our measure,

That and in the unsuspected depth of the mirror.

 

Yet, finally, the future’s focus is tight

On the oncoming darkness –

The tunnel at the end of the light.