Through Your Eyes

Tonight, writing a poem for you,

I looked up a word

in your Sesotho-English dictionary

and a photograph fell out.

I see a wide, dry, golden landscape,

lone tree in the foreground,

long shadows across the grasses,

dusky mountains in the distance,

a rainbow softly dissolving.

Thank you Jeremy

for taking this picture,

for slipping it carelessly into a book

and forgetting, so I could find it

years later and cry

to receive such a gift:

to see the world once more

through your eyes.

Alma Maria Rolfs

December 2002