I must be
the most frequent word in all poems
written since 1960
at least by me
Lens the world shows through
— ever smaller, ever closer —
is self-hued, sometimes rose’d
always me-tinted
Don’t know for sure if that’s so
I can figure out how
I see what’s not inside me
Yellowbellied squirrels
playing tag up and down the tree trunk,
their tails in spasm or maybe signing
poems of their own
One pauses, stares
right in the window, eye to eye
tells me my vision’s nuts
to how she sees the world
