Flashes

for Dave Smith

It’s not the eye I took the grounder in,

that roller that hopped just once, exploded

inside my skull, spinning me into left

where I clawed the grass and everybody

came running and none of them laughing.

You never saw a worse shiner. By Sunday

something made of calf’s liver had eaten

the eye and festered into a naked,

fist-sized gastropod that wanted the rest

of my face. It happened at third, which I played

damned well, if I do say so myself. The killer

streaked just inside the line, dirt-hugging laser

I’d begged for from the fungoed high school star

who gave me what I said I wanted—then

a visionary blink of supernova.

I really thought the eye had burst inside

the socket. What else could make such a flash?

But these flashes—that’s what the doc calls them—

they’re in the left eye. Offstage lightning by

candlelight. And, man, do they make floaters.

I’m half blind with dustballs, dark matter.

daylight world frozen in a flash of too much

revelation, thinking of you, my friend,

whose eyes have held up well since we stood at

the door of your room crammed with books,

deploring clichés and, I remember—don’t I?—

one of us quoting Emerson and speculating

on blindness, standing easy in those bodies

we both seemed to think were already old,

not having a clue about this future

we’ve kept somehow scooping up, getting out,

and jogging away from—you guessed it—past home.