Seeing is an Art

Four Apples, by Paul Cezanne (France). 1881.

Seeing is an Art

Seeing is an art
when you’ve got new bifocals.
Position them correctly
and see a Cezanne apple on the table,
looking tastier than ever before.
A block of sidewalk becomes a cube,
a neighbourhood a Picasso.

The ophthalmologist has given me
new glasses, said they’d work just fine
but I’m balancing 
on their dividing line
as if I’m trying to climb over a mountain
in a Cezanne painting of only lines
suggesting a mountain to the imagination.

Recently my four eyes saw 
sunflowers as big and bright as those 
painted by Van Gogh.
My eyes dance from thing to thing
and place to place as if they are
abstract ballerinas by Dali
in dance moves by Degas.

Yvonne Vinstra