AUTISM: A POEM
. . . . . XXI. Insomnia
After a month of drought, the August
. . . . . lawns burnt brown under bright sunlight,
a few weightless clouds now drift by
. . . . . in a late afternoon sky. Already, parched
leaves of our backyard trees have begun
. . . . . to turn; each curls like a crisp bit of paper
placed a little above a flickering candle
. . . . . flame. My son shades his eyes to glimpse
the horizon, as if again awaiting tints
. . . . . he sees every evening hinting at the finish
of one more day. In his mind, Alex is
. . . . . measuring time by charting the sun’s arc,
tracing its rate of descent beyond far
. . . . . lines of black trees, marking this brilliant
vision of backlit landscape to recall all
. . . . . these details in the darkest hours of night,
when he will fear the sounds he hears
. . . . . in dry winds blowing outside his window,
hoping to remember even those distant
. . . . . stones glowing like embers in a dying fire.
Here, as in all of your Autism poems, I am struck by the wonders that fill Alex's eyes, that let him see so much that so many of us miss--and that Alex sees through Nature, with Nature as his guide.
ReplyDeleteI like in this poem how you trace the measurement of time and changing of the light -- from "bright sunlight" and "late afternoon sky" through "sun's arc,/tracing... descent", a "backlit landscape" and the "darkest hours of night" -- to help us see through Alex's eyes.
I like the title and its relationship to the poem, too.