On His Birthday

I asked you what you wanted

For your birthday; it’s now arrived 

This early spring day, 

And you shed some tears

And said,

“I want my sight back,”

And that stymied me:

Now what? 

And then I began to think

Perhaps 

You do have sight.

I mean, this trauma has delivered

Insight and patience, 

Resilience embedded in 

The lessons of never quite knowing, 

The lessons that one really doesn’t want 

To have to learn,

The inchoate lessons that 

Emerge to keep one going.

Faith floats out there

On a heretofore unknown horizon

It’s not sharp or clear, and muddies 

Contours that already are not crisp,

But there waiting is a different promise

That one hopes to never realize

Because the price of such clarity

Is too dear to contemplate. 

So you just keep on

And you find 

I think, perhaps 

That thrive is a goal tinged

With the golden fog of hope,

And the slow dawn, the 

Process of a dawn that tells you that 

You are just fine. 

You see all 

You need to see. 

And you continue on. 

~ Peter, April 25