BLIND POET

        For Marcie

She has braces on her teeth and wears
a blue and orange plaid cotton shirt:

One of fourteen students

Wiggles, chatters, finds her way
into her friends' poems.

Straightens her back like a pianist
readying herself for a performance.

Sitting upright, intent
she completes, aloud,
ahead of the others

Their own, half-formed images. "Damnit, Marcie,
whose poem is this?"

They squirm, they squabble, and defer.
Composing herself,
both hands moving smoothly

Over an embossed, a braille keyboard
of otherwise blank pages,
she reads

From a manuscript of dots.

Robert Sward           4.96


A Much-Married Man, Robert Sward's new novel, has just been published by Ekstasis Editions (Canada), ISBN 0-921215-99-1, and is available from the publisher: FAX/Phone 408-426-5247.
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