Notes from the River

Second sight, my uncle used to say. The cicadas deafening
each morning by the river. We are peering into the scorched

gray and waiting for that transitional moment when
the senses shift and you see what isn’t there. The dull

plosives emerging from the blurred trees. Thinking
about the way a single photon can be absorbed inside

a rod cell. Do we covet the photon? Do we caress it
and try to keep it from the cones? The sun struggling

to bob above the swamp’s rim, longing to claim
the black tupelos on the far shore. Light aching to be

absorbed inside the rhodopsin protein, to thrum its way
as electrical impulses along the optic river

to the waiting brain. The line of morning stretching
across the horizon till it’s a spirit.