The Longing To See

You won’t be able
to see through it,
said the surgeon who
put the dark bubble

of gas into my sick
eye, yet if i held it
just so, I could steal
inside its small,

refracted world,
broken into beautiful
colors that sickness
and dark had made,

a sort of poetry
without the words,
which I returned to
even after the bubble

was gone — all well
except for my old
incompleteness
and the longing

for its way of seeing,
the irresistible
looking out
while looking in.