When I was in college, I watched a lot of foreign films, always struck by how much more of a role sensory impressions played in those films that the American ones I was used to. Colors were brighter, sounds more pronounced...aspects that would have been completely overlooked in an American film often took center stage in these.

That's what strikes me about this poem--how the modest and mundane can become beautiful and significant if we just slow down long enough to really notice them.

2010 Poetry Parade: Day 11

Sight Will Sharpen
by
S. Thomas Summers

If you gaze through a window long enough,
you’ll discover your eyes tether themselves
to some trivial chip of scenery: a gray mailbox,
its open mouth tilted skyward like a canon –
the dark belly of a garbage can harboring secrets:
the brown flesh of a half-eaten pear and the worn skin
of a kitchen towel stained with mustard
and strawberry jam. Your sight will sharpen itself
against your imagination and the darkness insulating
the air between evergreen branches will brighten.
The shade tattooed beneath a row of tulips near
the neighbor’s fence will glow.

© by S. Thomas Summers
Used here with the author's permission.

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