‘Burning into retinas'

Sugar maple in May

Sugar maple in May

“Who knows

What it is that’s keeping the trees from appearing to us

The way they appear to the lifelong blind stricken

Unexpectedly with sight, blots and flashes of scarifying

green burning into retinas.’’

“Spring Morning,’’ by Tom Sleigh (born 1953), American poet and professor at Dartmouth College and elsewhere