While walking I saw
something move in the corner of my eye.
When I gazed straight at it,
it was gone.
But, on second glance, askance,
there it was, again.
To and fro, direct and peripheral,
it appeared and disappeared on cue.
Head down, focused, tunnel-eyed:
I missed the cherry blossom burst.
I missed the fledgling bird\'s first flight.
I missed seeing clouds both sides now.
I missed the birth of mirth in common in crowds.
I missed the context of milieu\'s view wide-angled
With eyes binocular.
Head down, glued to the viewfinder, set to myopic focus,
I had no inkling of what I missed
as I walked.
Night fell.
I back-tracked the path in the dark,
under the gaze of the crescent moon.
But, the path was vague in darkness.
The harder I looked,
the more I focused straight-ahead,
the less I could see the path.
It disappeared from view.
I stumbled into side-walk bushes.
I tripped over a log.
Weirdly, the path loomed up clear,
outta the gloom, in every sideways glace I made,
Clearly spelled-out in peripheral.
Whenever I picked myself up from a fall.
or glanced back askew from the side-walk,
the path was clear as a bell,
in sideways view peripheral.
But, if I looked back directly dead-ahead,
to see the path clearly defined, in twenty-twenty,
it was gone.
The only way to track the path
was to flick the eyes
to and fro in glances,
into and out of the corners.
Like a boxer in three minute rounds.
I struggled ahead along the path dark and gloomy.
Weaving like a wayward drunkard
pledged to be sober as a judge.
Plying the wobbly peripheral path
with view finder
set to landscape,
lens set to fish-eye.