I make no claims

of brilliance or elegance

only of white walls

and handmade furniture

of lavenders blooming

and roses climbing

outside my window,

even in winter

I know of tadpoles and lizards,

snakes and crayfish

of flint rocks and red clay

passion fruit and sumac berries.

I have tasted sand,

caressed hawk feathers

and scarred my knuckles

while building barbed wire fences

I walked the halls of academia,

succeeded, so they tell me,

because of my memory

and ability to read people

but somehow I have failed

to understand the appeal

of leather cases, concrete,

high heel shoes

and gray wool skirts.

In a place
I’ve never seen,
across an ocean
and a couple of continents,
you live among temples
and dark-eyed children
married to
an Asian queen
with warm copper skin,
a voice of porcelain bells,
and soft tiny feet

or maybe
you live alone
in an outback desert
with west winds
combing your hair,
biting your back,
refusing to let you
forget where you’ve been.

A man or a woman,
you’re a mystery to me
in a world I’ll never see
and still, mostly,
I just wonder

what you look like,
the color of your hair
if you have any.
To one born without sight
it wouldn’t matter
but because I was not
I can’t see you
when I close my eyes.