OF THE BEHOLDER

The eye
looked me in the eye.

I couldn't take my eyes
off of it.

It was a fine brown eye
sitting there in the pale sunshine

that grew paler by the second.

I knew I knew the eye
...somehow, but

- not how.

It seemed more
that the eye recognised me.

A fat raindrop
spattered on it.

Followed by another and
another.

Suddenly it seemed
that the eye that couldn't cry

was doing just that.

He picked the eye up
put it in his blazer's top pocket.

Only when he had walked
for an hour or more

did he know
who the eye belonged to.

It was a Vermeer.

That Vermeer with
the young girl turning

as if you had just
called her name.

Where the mouth is slightly open
as if she would answer you.

He wondered how
the eye had come to be

gazing up at him
begging to be

not abandoned.

He wondered where
the rest of the jigsaw

had gone and
why the eye

had seen him
as its only saviour.

He put the eye
in a clear glass frame

where it seemed
to float happily

a suspended being
staring back at me.