Histology

I see by light refracted

               through vitreous humor and crystalline lens,

eyes seen under glass,

               in microscopic focus.

Is seeing seen in rods and cones,

               the physics of refracted light,

or does my seeing break the link

               between the seen and seeing mind?

---

Secret signals, passed by photons

               through darkened orbitals,

excite the local population

               of electrons, resting in their rows.

The potential for revolt increases,

               passing from orbital to orbital,

like lighting finding ground

               in consciousness,

‘til in the brain they disappear.

---

Image passes through a chain of custody,

               from seen to signal

               on to hopeful host.

A mass of neurons,

               hidden in the brain,

               keen for word of distant lands.

A letter lands upon that desk,

               waiting for interpretation,

               interpolation in the text of mind.

But what it finds cannot be seen,

               ‘cept in a mirror,

that by passing light to light

               alienates the thing it sees.

---

Can I see myself,

               but in a mirror darkly,

light from light degenerate,

               an image not the thing itself?

Light transcendent, light divine,

               friend and revolutionary,

               that breaks the walls of darkened solitude;

Light the tyrant, cruel, unkind,

               that stands between

               the knower and the known.

---

Images fall through cracks where light shines in,

               lurk still in darkened lines where photons never fall,

               where electrons fear to tread.

And so the revolution never happens,

               the revelation of mind to mind,

               in mirror or in microscope.

Sight unseen reveals the hidden world;

the eye dissected cannot see.

---

Lucas Mix 3/23/2022