Anything But – a poem by Carol Casey

Anything But


“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
John Keats

“Tell all truth but tell it slant”
Emily Dickinson

It’s tricky of truth to need 
to slant all blinding beauty
so that cornea, lens, retina 
tamper, measure, clip, 
alter light to give us only 
what won’t kill or drive insane.  

And malleus, incus, stapes
contain galleys where 
excruciating music gets 
rinsed, chopped, cooked, 
and presented as 
a comforting pablum 

while censors in the brain keep 
busy with white-out so that cognition 
receives its correspondence full 
of gaps- blank spaces with 
enough words left to make sense, 
leave us unsuspecting.  

And some filter, when we 
look at each other, illuminates 
blemishes, jowls, wrinkles, 
skin colour, scowls, scars, 
stains, fashion sins-
anything but the miracle.

Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Prairie Journal, Sublunary Review, Plum Tree Tavern and others, including a number of anthologies, most recently, Tending the Fire and i am what becomes of broken branch. Facebook: @ccaseypoetry; Twitter: @ccasey_carol; Webpage: https://learnforlifepotential.com/home-2/poetry/