Clifford Paul Fetters

Clifford Paul Fetters has poems published or forthcoming in The New York Review of Books, Poet Lore, The Seattle Review, The Atlanta Review, Paintbrush, and many other magazines. He lives in Seattle.

Waters of Sight

I heard about a woman who, years ago,
before the big fence, jumped from
the Empire state Building but was blown
back to a level below and lived.

Have you heard that one? I believe it.
So after, how did she feel when the grocery line
went all the way back to the doughnuts,
when the cleaners melted the buttons of her dress
or her ice cream fell off the cone?
Did she see it all differently? Or not?

My wife and I knew a good writer who didn’t live.
Not heard from for days they splintered her door
and entered a Saturn ring of gas.
What does she see now?

How to get to the waters of sight
if you can’t see how to get there?
The blind man was told to go to Siloam
and wash the clay from his unseeing eyes.
Who helped him get to Siloam?