Eye

It pools blue light at spill-point
before an unexpected birch,
its scatter of leaves.

In dreams, he'd graze below this birch,
its slender branches reaching
to a windless sky.

Now the meadow scuds away,
its close-cropped grass drenched
in mist.

Without him, the sapling secures
its own horizon,
a knuckle of root sunk in the Earth
and that bruise of dark light above.

The structure is noted: blood vessels,
tapetum, retina.
There is the sound of metal instruments
being placed carefully in trays.

No one registers
the smallest shadow of a bird,
a confetti of fireflies orbiting the trunk,
the stray leaf drifting to the ground.

The eye is bagged, discarded.
Surfaces are sterilized.

In his own dark world,
the horse waits.