Floaters

Today, through black floaters,
because my right eye is under siege
by that best-intentioned surgeon with laser,
today is thinly veiled.
And the sky with its black floaters
seems half-blind, too;
the crows dipping over the town.

October’s brilliance is half gone from the avenues,
or lies on lawns and gutters;
and rain, the blessed curse 
in dissolved frost, yields ropes of mirrors.
The cheap, chiming clock says almost ten.

Then why this happiness in muted things?
Some equation of time and space,
a slowed perception of the battered brain
strips back like leaves to unexpected glittering.

Ruth Stone, “Floaters” from In the Dark. Copyright © 2004 by Ruth Stone. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. See coppercanyonpress.org.