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.

I picked the eye up
put it in my blazer's top pocket.

Only when I had walked
for an hour or more

did I 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.

I wondered how
the eye had come to be

gazing up at me
begging to be

not abandoned.

I wondered where
the rest of the jigsaw

had gone and
why the eye

had seen me
as its only saviour.

I put the eye
in a clear glass frame

where it seemed
to float happily

a suspended being
staring back at me.