I Don't See

I expected something up out of the water

not the shadow in the wave that rose

to fill the wave then splash a breath

off the abutting air then disappear.

I didn't see any of this only

the dark wave. Even the size of a whale

I don't see what I look directly at.

I didn't see the pronghorn antelope,

speed they pointed out equal our car's,

but never having seen distance so large

I couldn't pin in it point to antler

and saw in parallax instead the world

entire a still brown arc of leap so like

a first look at the milky way each stone

a star I saw but could not see.

I didn't see

the Nazca earth drawings looking at a line

like a path the vision on it my not looking up.

& trying to see from on the ground looking

from a plane thousands of feet above

maybe I saw only what the unenlightened

marking out the lines could see from there

because I never saw the figures

until shown from books.

I've told folk half the truth that I was there I was

but embarrassed never told I missed my chance

until I saw: without embarrassment

this country miss its chance looking at color

and not see what it looked directly at,

without embarrassment

act and not see that done

on its own hands not see its own bright blood.

Source: Just In: Word of Navigational Challenges (Talisman House, 1998)