Clairvoyance

Oliver Baez Bendorf

Some god drew eyes all over

the trunks of aspen, and then,

on account of godlike things, began,

from some eyes, to grow new

limbs out of the pupils,

out into the open

of the windy atmosphere. What have you seen?

I wondered of the aspen, and do they

wonder the same of me? And

you reading this, what have you known?

The moon, almost full, rising in a pale

blue sky?

I prefer to listen, looking one way,

then the other.

I look at mouths when they speak.

I like to look at what you look at.

Maybe I am looking for a future,

word after sequential word

strung together to make an image.

The way my dad,

through binoculars, looks.

Not scrutiny but something else.

Everywhere I look, eyes. Ocular

patterns on the aspen.

I have seen the future:

something begins to sprout,

making contact—


What surprised you about the composition of this poem?

Nothing returns the gaze of nature quite like eyes. Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, I was struck by the aspen eyes, marks formed where branches once lived before the tree self-pruned. This encounter led to questions about communication and witnessing as acts of reciprocity. “Clairvoyance” is the final poem in my forthcoming book, Consider the Rooster, which celebrates the rooster’s crow as a call toward (among other things) deeper ecological consciousness. One memorable aspect of writing this poem was choosing the word “ocular” for its precise resonance, while appreciating its near conjuring of “oracular.”

Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of Consider the Rooster, forthcoming in September 2024, and two previous collections of poems: Advantages of Being Evergreen and The Spectral Wilderness. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Publishing Triangle, CantoMundo, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Born and raised in Iowa, he now lives in Colorado.
Originally published:
September 4, 2024

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