Vision test

I once dated a nearsighted girl
whose eyes looked perpetually unfocused
even at close range, unless
she was staring back into mine,
our noses pressed together,
her signature sign of affection.
Her desire descended on me
like a party of sandhill cranes in Nebraska
A thunderous riot in full fall migration,
making their prehistoric, singular jazz trumpet calls.
And while I am ashamed now to say
that I could have tamed these idiotically-fearless birds,
befriended them year after year, bathed in their magic,
let their dragon wings beat against me with the utmost tenderness,
I, an inglorious Gilded Age hunter, harvested more of them than I could carry
fluffing my pillow, my featherbed, my hat with their foolish, endearing innocence.

I built a shrine to her love, it took years, decades,
a grotto illustrating what I did and did not return,
but desire doesn’t live in stone caves.
it flew to some safer, warmer, far-off place
and only then could I see it clearly:
the cavernous space of my jeweled cave
was nothing but a blank space,
an empty picture frame
where a photo of us,
both wearing glasses,
should have been.