Flushing The Eye With Light

"Flushing The Eye With Light" came out of a poetry exercise using Mark Wunderlich's poem "Once I Walked Out."

In the exercise I borrowed Wunderlich's final line "flushing the eye with light," and used it as my first. I the took down the final words in every line and used them to start each line of my own poem, keeping the original form of mid-sized free verse couplets.

The line that I borrowed is stylistically much different than my own writing style (it's soft and natural while I tend to go with campy character comedy) and the single words I borrowed forced me to write in a lot of other natural elements. It's definitely a poem I would never have written without the exercise.

Anyway, here it is:

Flushing The Eye With Light
after Mark Wunderlich

Flushing the eye with light
Heavens seemed to press in

Dew drops reflecting the sun, my
Lungs filling with wet air, my

Skin sticking to my damp clothes
Sumacs close by, their red telling

Me to stop and stay, soaking in the warm
Tub of his bubbles and salts

Bats fly in zig zag patterns around my
House, warmly fading into a summer’s

Haze. The brush of the grass on my arms
Sums up how I feel about him. I am not

Spiteful that he leaves stains. That worry
Flies like the squawking birds soaring across the

Grass-mattress we lie, the sides of our arms
Gentle touched, grazed like

Sheep that have fed for too long
Kind, soft sheep like the clouds above,

Well aware of openness of the field and
Hugely blue vastness of the morning sky

Bent over I take a spot by your side, my
World, glows like a heaven

And for contrast, here is the text of Wunderlich's poem:

Once I Walked Out

Once I walked out and the world
rushed to my side.  The willows bent

their willowy necks, tossed green hair hugely.
The hawk cried by the well.

The crows kept counting their kind.
Once I walked out and the sheep

bleated with sensitivity, touched
black muzzles to the grass.

I was followed by dogs, by flies,
by horses both curious and spiteful.

The field of beans worked its sums
under green, the corn licked the air to haze.

I said goodbye to the house
with its sagging porch, attic hung with bats.

Goodbye braided rug, rabbit hutch, corn popper, copper tub .
The green world greened around me--

Virginia creeper, crown vetch, thistle, mullein, sumac.
I was full in my limbs, my laugh, pinkish skin.

I swung my arms, pulled air into lungs--
pine pollen, dust mote, mold spore, atomized dew,
​
bright wheel of flame twisting in the heavens
flushing the eye with light.

(poem courtesy of Graywolf Press)

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