Once the Poem Ends

Once the Poem Ends

At unexpected times the world wears

a violet hue, when all we labeled sure

takes on an infant strangeness long

since lost. A word, perhaps, begins to sound

absurdly alien, a vocal smear of paint

that you are shocked once signified

your middle name, or ears take on

a comic quality that till that time

had quarantined itself within the card-

board covers of Dr. Seuss. The hardest part

of these unprecedented trips across a foreign 

hemisphere is not the trip itself, but then returning

to articulate precisely what you saw to those

back home—they tend to say things like “I know

exactly what you mean!” before proceeding

so absurdly far from what you mean

you simply nod and pray their tongue falls out. 

So please, my friend, say nothing if I tell about

this current shift of mine, where now it seems

irrational that vision is restricted to a single

focal point. The way that everything beside

this word is only blurry possibility around 

the edge of sight seems otherworldly, and really

just this stanza, say, if factored down accordingly,

is simply disconnected inky dots

that we must layer up like Jenga blocks

in hopes to build a tower firm enough to climb 

our way to meaning. What sort of scanty poem 

can we then construct with so inadequate  

a view? I haven’t found conclusive answers yet, 

to this or many other pressing questions

dancing in the violet land—these short vacations

always end before I’ve made myself at home,

as fleeting as your eye along this line

or thoughts about your eye along this line.

Maybe we'll piece it all together once the poem ends.