Lenses
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
There is nothing elegant in my body.
I am a mass of brute angles.
Square palms, short arms,
A true trunk of body –
More forest than flesh.
But the flick and flash of my eyelash
Has in it something of the dancer.
Forever curled against the glass
Of my clear window.
Swish, Bend. Softly scrape.
They leave the meanest hint
Of oily life against their prison wall.
But repetition builds strength
And every day I am forced
To wipe away the graffiti
Of my eyes.
About the Author
Stephen Whitehead is a poet and photographer who lives with his wife in the East of England. He has a degree in Classics and is inspired by the storytelling that shapes out lives as well as the small and perfect details of the natural world. New to sharing his poetry, Stephen was first published last year in Future Fire.