Eye-Opening Light
by Odin Roark

We discovered them.

There's a place,
we all know it,
Main Street America,
that place where
deals are done by them,
innocents become guilty by them,
trials are tried by them.

We learned about them.

This place that starts early,
schools short of everything:
lined paper,
pencils with erasers,
full-length crayons,
chalk stubs—no sticks,
while administrators laugh
the short way to the bank.

We tried them.

That place of the first job,
the first date,
the first car,
the first seduction.

We enticed them.

Some found the glitter-place,
where three-piece suits
came from Brooks Bros.,
not J.C. Penny,
where two-martini lunches
boded well the norm,
trumping yesteryear's
Big Macs and Cokes.

We joined them.

Where going home
meant driver-driven,
doorman-opened,
gilded-elevator ascending,
glass enclosed retreating,
marble floored 24-hour surround-life.

Our own delusions.
Our own voice.
Our own mirrored image.
Our own terraced view,
Glitter without light.

Some
Looked out across roofs of lessor quest.

Some
Looked skyward in duplicitous gratitude

Some
Looked down toward honesty’s gravity.

Rising up from thirty-eight floors below,
the everyday people,
the ones making possible this illusionist’s cocoon,
this insulated veneer,
exudes eye-opening light.

Don’t look away.