500 Yard Stare

Jimmy Stanley stumble-bummed,
wore those goofy Buddy Holly glasses,
black frames and tape on the bridge,
just another greaser with sideburns.
(But he was unashamed of the glasses:
fashion later came from shame.)
Came Vietnam, and once discharged,
he stared through his former buddies.
Had you asked Jimmy for a cigarette,
he’d give you the pack, and look away.
But when his eye-beams pierced clouds
to seek the serenest of solar systems,
five-hundred yards became thousands.
Although fellow veteran Billy stumbled too,
being a speed-freak and a womanizer,
their commiseration tied him to the ground.
Not Jimmy – less popular, a larger figure though,
far more earnest. To hear galaxies,
he had to be still. He needed the serenity
of vermin, of the river-rat in the sedge,
of the blue-bottle fly on the ceiling,
of all creatures waiting for their day.
To Jimmy, thought was being. To stop
was an escape. That’s what he practiced.
One place on earth on which
he didn’t want to be was just as good
as any other, as good as all of them,
as rooms he found himself in, as good
as any room on earth, or empty square
in some resort town, provided his stare
could plane from the sphere to what
had never been touched or described.
For that he didn’t need glasses
nor bridges, nor seas they straddled
nor land they stretched between
to move from one ship sinking to another.