A Practical Approach

I’m asked how I perceive visual stimuli.
To ask inward, do I see with eyes, or feel with eyes?

A homeless woman pushes a carriage of cans;
I envision her in earlier years fighting a relentless drug czar,
her weary eyes a reflection of failed triumph.

Such over-examination, they say, defines my sadness,
where it comes from, how it grows.

Not fleeting sadness, reserved for street rejections.
Not the sadness of farewells, dwelling in nostalgic contexts.

But the kind that feels, being in itself,
an innermost factory, pulsing, producing

the film on the eyes, the woven fingerprint,
a clairvoyant empathy toward anonymous subjects.