The language of eye contact
Your eyes are not a metaphor.
I just meet them and stay there for a while,
And I just keep looking.
They’re more like the moment
Pancakes begin to smell like morning
Before the sun has even decided
What kind of day it will be.
There is a whole neighborhood
Living in those eyes:
Kids laughing on front steps and passing around a soccer ball,
Grandmothers watering and reviving stubborn plants,
And somebody’s radio humming a song
That everyone loves and picks up on.
I swear sometimes, when you blink,
It feels like the lights dim just long enough
For the world to lean closer to the end
Because I can’t see them.
But when they open again,
They keep me like I am actually worth something
Putting on the shelf,
Like, where the good dishes are.
That kind of looking;
That kind of gentle, unafraid, everyday miracle
Is the closest thing I know to being home.
Matthew Johnson is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Jackie Robinson’s Real Gone: Baseball Poems of New York (Cornerstone Press). His poetry has appeared in Apple Valley Review, Heavy Feather Review, London Magazine, and elsewhere. A recipient of multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, support from the Emily Dickinson Museum and Hudson Valley Writers Center, as well as a finalist for the Diverse Voices Book Award (Grand View University) and E.E. Cummings Poetry Award (New England Poetry Club), he’s managing editor of Portrait of New England and the poetry editor of The Twin Bill. www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com
