The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org
by Larry Moffi
THE TEMPTATION OF ANYTHING DISTANT
I had an old pair of binoculars, Zeitz, well made in Germany, somebody who loved me once offered, thinking soon I could be far away, at sea. Well beyond oceanic horizons I have found it easy to neglect what tends to become of the dust, eventually, between threads of the lens casing.
Until they surfaced last week among the discard pile of junk that accumulates with an intimacy of life itself, I had forgotten how warm they press, like a healing against the sockets of my eyes, the temptation of anything distant, as I held the two black pebbled barrels inside my fists.
I'm not much good at riddles machines pose in disassembly. I never owned an erector set or consistently deduced in school the wild and many molecular ideograms that distinguish acid from base. But I can speak at least of honor bestowed by a man resolved toward the miraculous.
At the common periphery of neighborhoods, our semi-annual flea market where little sells for worth, he found me. One hundred white robins, at least, he whispered, and I want to be ready next time. So I accepted his money, exactly what I was asking, his awe as honest as the exchange that lives even now between us.
Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication
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