Very slowly he sipped his tea
Not shifting his glance from the thick double
Spaced printing he read with his jeweler's eye

Engrossed in his corner
He passed onto the other inhabitants of the room
A scrawled insularity of time and space

For both passed him by with the speed of light
Not unlike the flow of substance however varied
Into that lysergic entity known as the black hole

He was hardly ugly for his time
And conversation was certainly not lost on him
Drastic measures were called for
And as in antiquity the lonely man was blessed
With wisdom to the point of desperation

But there in his corner, developing around him
Like a sun was a climate of such rare beauty
That sight and sound could no longer be considered
Sufficient food for the senses

And he had begun to notice as his hearing failed
That mind and matter were in no way connected to one other
As if in fact the one could not propose and prove
Its erotic existence in terms of the other

'What does this word mean?'
He enquired of the solemn waiter hopefully
'Nothing for desert sir', came the reply
'Perhaps a cocktail, demitasse or a herbal essence
It helps the breathing you know sometimes'
'The bill, if you don't mind', quickly he shot back

And as the patter of the feet faded in the room
For he barely heard them now, his eye slowly began to close
And by the time he emerged on the sunny street
He was forced to rely entirely on the other eye for help

But happily it continued its many functions
Blinking gently for lubrication and registering images
It was rush hour in Hawaii only ten a.m.

So turning into his street
He stopped at the drug store and bought an eye patch
That soon covered the reluctant eye

Climbing the stairs he pondered what to do next
He would call a doctor and have tests made
Eat nourishing food and if necessary consent to surgery
The last resort of the gambling man

And at one a.m. he awoke from a dream
And after fumbling his way in the obsolescent light of his room
He peered into the rusty veins of his mirror
And lifted away the patch, what he saw astonished him

Where once was tremulous tissue and membrane
Was now a follicle and perfectly formed vagina with vulva
Overgrown and mysterious, unrevealing and still to the untrained eye

But in the deep dark recesses of that sticky occlusion
Lay the unclosing watchful eye of disgust in its closing moments
Lunging forward and hungry for the cold light of days