Vision

by Renee Elton

“The facts of this world seen clearly
are seen through tears…”
(Margaret Atwood)

Tears are not on their eyelashes
or cheeks
not splashing on their wrists
falling like pendants of salty blood.

They laugh
and tell us they have cried
all their tears
there is nothing wrong with their eyes
emptiness is not their immorality
just hollowness
we can’t fill.

We can’t fill this famine.

We can’t lift them up
and turn them on their bellies
like colicky infants.

We can’t lift them up
and show them where God should be—
they looked there before
and saw him laughing.

###

Renee Elton is a poet and teacher, currently working on a manuscript of poems about Victorian explorers in West Africa. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. A returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Elton has completed a book of poems on Sierra Leone and the women’s secret society there. She recently lived in Stuttgart, Okinawa, and Florida, completing a set of art/visual poems using her botanical photographs.