Blind Man on Market Street

I'm beginning to believe

we're verily bound. Seems every time

I step outside,

he's walking my way, cane

tapping, tapping, or sort of

stirring

the pavement just ahead.

He holds his face, distracted, to the sky,

cane always

to the ground. As if blindness

were the occasion

of seeing two ways at once.

Sometimes I have to step

to one side, then the other--he always seems

headed directly for me!--

and I'm beginning to believe

we're bound to collide. That clicking cane, that divining rod

on its way, perhaps,

beyond us both.

This morning I stopped. Exasperated, I guess,

by the awkwardness, humanness, extraordinary

everydayness

of the moment. And it was as if, in his just-then

graceful passing,

he passed right through me.

As if the lights went out and he

did the seeing,

for a moment.