Third Eye of the Sightless Woman

Deprived of what doctors call normal vision,
she still envisioned worlds beyond worlds;
seeing each person beneath their form or color,
she possessed the gift of sight in her ears.

She heard beauty, shame, promise of each person
and saw their auras while listening to their stories.
Behind the vague stare was a screen of inner vision,
and here ran a constant stream of color and shape,
as all things passed her acute field of hearing.

Dogs barking in sharp blacks and whites.
Birds whirling in dissipating pinks and ochres.
Breezes green with promise of pale cyan rain.

But music – ah! music held the entire palette.
Symphonic orchestras, brilliant watercolor fields.
Strings pulling rakes to mingle azures and apricots,
brass spotting canvas with dots and long sturdy lines
of coral and dust, the silverfoil tingle of cymbals.

Jazz was denser; oils, perhaps, a thicker base.
Saxes hacking crimson into piano’s sepia lines.
drums ticking tapping low, inking ebony onto the canvas.
The singer could be violet, Ivy Anderson; sapphire,
Ethel Waters; or Julie London’s burgundy midnight.
And Billie: Dry-brushed for texture, always blue.

© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
dverse poetry asked for poems about opening one’s third eye. My best vision has always been heard (synesthesia adds to this; because of my condition, I often hear sight patterns). And so I gifted my subject with a different kind of sight. This is also posted at my poetic heart, Poets United. Peace, Amy


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