A Turning

 Just a little shift - that's all it was -
and the world opened. I had not thought
it so easy, nor so difficult.

One moment I could tell you
a long story of dark and doom,
of impatience, exclusive arrogance,
small seeing, my self the centre.
The next moment, with a loosening
not unlike the shudder of a snake shedding
her beautiful, patterned skin -
it all fell away, blindness removed
like some healing miracle
you don't want to see on television.

I cannot explain this turning.
I only feel its effect.

It takes, I am told,
about a week
for a python to complete her shedding.
During that time she is blind -
a white milky substance covering her eyes
until the old skin is completely gone.
Only then do her eyes clear.

Perhaps this is the way
with humans also,
blind for years and years while changes
nudge their slow way through
the dance of light and dark,
torment and ecstasy, this and that,
wearing us down and down
into the cave of surrender.

Where, finally, just at the moment
when all is surely lost
the skin of illusion pushes away at last.
Sight returns, clearer than it ever was.
And in the twinkling of an eye
the world is changed, not ended
and a turning, like heavy summer rain,
leaves the fresh world sharply visible
and keenly new.