My Brother's Blindness

My Brother's Blindness

"When I consider how my light is spent..."
                            --John Milton, On His Blindness

I think of that first morning
when you wake blind,
that one short moment, a split-
second that will linger for years,
and everything in me softens to tears.
I see how my closed eyelids are a wash
of moving color,
and lose focus.
Although the sun still rises,
the splintered stars still come out, and
each night street lamps are lit,
this world will never again be
a place you can visit.
You will be patient.  Like Milton,
you will only stand and wait.
Wherever you are now, even though
you've stepped away from your body,
a ghost of yourself, I hope
in some other galaxy, in another
dimension,  you may yet see
the light of other suns, other stars,
illuminating everything.