"Wk. 3: The Visual System; anatomy of the eye, physiological properties of the retina, lateral inhibition, sensory coding, pattern vs specificity theory."

 

      I know my eye. 

      My right eye. 

      I've done more precise looking through it. 

      I've taken pictures with cameras. 

      I've aligned rifles and shotguns with specific targets. 

      I've watched cans, squirrels, and birds in motion 

      after I've hit them, seen them fly whole and apart 

      at the same time. I've studied in books the way 

      to see rear, front, and target sights at once.  

      I've set the black circle of competition targets  

      perfectly atop the pattern joined in my eye, 

      the pinhole rear sight of a hefty target rifle 

      and the wedge-cut of a snap-shoot plinking gun, 

      the front sight standard, standing. 

      I've breathed and held and squeezed, and wed 

      in my sight those weapons and those mostly lifeless targets.  

 

      The specific target becomes the pattern, a whole act  

      in bones racked from shoulder to shoulder. With archery 

      I learned to see with both eyes open, to draw and hold, 

      and roll the string by power I'd put into a specific 

      machine. I've heard the slower throw of arrow and wind,  

      the weight more than lead, the pattern more satisfying. 

       

            My right eye grows very weak. 

            Without my glasses I can tell the blur 

            of all things into one soft pattern. (Monet's eyes 

            failed into magniloquent art.) My left eye 

            is barely three-depth sure. I'm afraid 

            of seeing less, of making one dark pattern.