By Joseph Byrd
/ Poetry /
Half seeing is whole seeing, if being clear is the ultimate opacity.
Once I had the audacity to be
found singing soprano in my middle-school cafeteria.
This the first shadow for my man in the moon.
Rewind to first grade when
gentle Jamie carved my name onto his desktop
carved with a crayon, that is, in Burnt Sienna.
This the second shadow, and man, how many
years waxed until I
sat alone in the Men’s room at the Dominican Center
(half seeing is whole seeing, if being clear is the ultimate opacity)
knowing no nun would have the audacity to
look for me in there.
St. Catherine of the Crayon also known as Sienna
spoke from her Dialogues as I sat there alone.
Be who God meant you to be and you will set the whole world on fire.
How much like candlewax can memories sometimes be
with heat that stings, that sears, when one nears what’s
supposed reality.
Half-moon is whole moon, depending on the light of day, and
boys who sing soprano ‘til age fifteen are often, at least by popular vote, gay, but
half seeing is whole seeing, if being clear is the ultimate opacity, and I have burned for
Jamie and been on fire with my wife in the conflagration of that audacity known as the
ravishing expansion of the movement of divine Light poured into my soul.
And it doesn’t care which of me is half, which of me is whole