Thinking about seeing

Recursive

As in a medieval miniature where space is
tilted and skewed, anchored only by a thread
of ink, a thin rope swelling into snaking patterns
copied from Asiatic silk the color of crushed gems
and beaten gold, the flat screen in front of my hands
tilts and skews, and my thin rope—a thought, that
mayfly of consciousness—flits to pattern again.

The variable pitch and yaw of these buildings
in a Sienese predella panel, the civic landscape
that carries all points of view simultaneously
(the bird’s-eye, the eye-level, the scopic)—I see
myself seeing, wishing for such isometric perspectives
while consumed by my own vanishing points.