Post-Impressionism
There has always been
so much to read —
by the age of nine,
my eyes were overwhelmed.
Though I swept and swept
the floor, my father wrested
the broom from my hands,
beat me with it, swept me
out of the kitchen:
“Don’t tell me you
can’t see that dirt!”
Not long after, I came home
clutching a note from my
teacher that read:
“Kathy can’t see the blackboard.”
At the optometrist’s office
I sat multi-lensed like a fly:
click, click, click, click
click, click, click, click
click,
until I could see not just the big E
but the grain of wood paneling,
the mosaic of asphalt on the freeway home,
my own eyes reflected
back at me in thick lenses;
lashes batting,
startled by clarity.
Above the walnut-veneered buffet,
what I’d taken as a portrait
of my mother and older sister
in rain-fresh blues and greens,
a title at the bottom of the frame,
revealed to be, On The Terrace;
from a smear of yellow,
a name: Renoir.
My mother’s face came into focus:
so worn, so drawn,
so much older;
the thousand-yard stare
of her aquamarine eyes.
That first moment
I saw her world
I had to look away.