And I start wondering how they came to be blind. <br />If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, <br />and I think of the poor mother <br />brooding over her sightless young triplets. <br /> <br />Or was it a common accident, all three caught <br />in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? <br />If not, <br />if each came to his or her blindness separately, <br /> <br />how did they ever manage to find one another? <br />Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse <br />to locate even one fellow mouse with vision <br />let alone two other blind ones? <br /> <br />And how, in their tiny darkness, <br />could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife <br />or anyone else's wife for that matter? <br />Not to mention why. <br /> <br />Just so she could cut off their tails <br />with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer, <br />but the thought of them without eyes <br />and now without tails to trail through the moist grass <br /> <br />or slip around the corner of a baseboard <br />has the cynic who always lounges within me <br />up off his couch and at the window <br />trying to hide the rising softness that he feels. <br /> <br />By now I am on to dicing an onion <br />which might account for the wet stinging <br />in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's <br />mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon," <br /> <br />which happens to be the next cut, <br />cannot be said to be making matters any better.<br /><br />Billy Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-chop-some-parsley-while-listening-to-art-blake/
