Eyedrops beside me, I reach
for the glasses I’ve worn since
I was six, no longer there after
the clouds have been cut away.
And new lenses, like the first time
with glasses: blue and greens,
sharpness and depth.

Once, in a leather goods store,
I admired a knee-length coat
with matching hat, the color
of cognac. I could wear that, but
so much would have to change:
lose weight to be as lean as
the mannequin, trim facial hair
to a precise moustache, pull
whiskey from a hidden flask,
start smoking again.

So much could change. A daughter
worries, “I don’t know if I can
handle it.” A son, “I look, and have
to look again.” A passing friend
struggles to know me until he hears
my voice. Yet so much has not:
I am the same, and there is much
I can imagine.

Judge’s Comments: “After Cataract Surgery” begins in the mundane but moves us swiftly into the world of perception, recounted and reflected upon—its colors, its revisions of the past, its present-day uncertainties. This poem reminds us to look and look again, to remember the things that cloud our visions and try to cut away at them, in order to see everything that is and everything that might be.