Who is looking out of the windows?
What do they see?
Do they see bare winter trees floating like the skeletons of fish in a sea of cloud?
Do they see evening shadows lengthening like fingers reaching for tomorrow?
Do they see stars blinking shyly one to another?
Do they see goblins and gargoyles lurking at the foot of a bed?
Do they see fireworks fizz, flare and float?
Do they see spiders spinning without webs?
Do they see zigs perpetually zagging?
Do they see Monsieur Bonnet making a nuisance of himself, again?
Do they see the colours of the rainbow turning into the letters of the alphabet?
Do they see a robin in the garden and shed a tear of remembrance?
Do they see swallows weaving and diving between distance and safety?
Do they see with their fingertips?
They do not see that step in the dark.
Do they see azure, ocean, and sapphire blue where you see dull, flat and featureless brown?
Do they see a world with no grease, no grime, no filth?
Do they see one half of everything? Which half?
Do they see the words of a prayer in the face of a saint?
Is almost everything they see sacred?
Do they see the razor-sharp scalpel coming towards them?
Do they see the girl, and the boy, with kaleidoscope eyes?
Do they see pictures of everything you say?
Do they see you slowly joining the dots?
Do they see the daylight fading like melting snowflakes?
Do they see the darkness falling like blue silk from the sky?
Do they see night arrive after a long day and collapse like a wave exhausted on the beach?
Do they see a library of books hanging from branches instead of a canopy of leaves?
Do they see any reason why they shouldn’t one day be as famous as Braque, Botticelli or Banksy?
Come and see.
Paul White
This piece by Paul explores what do we ‘see’ if we suffer from sight loss, in response to the Windows of the Soul exhibition. Find out more about the exhibition here