Sunglasses

For now we see through glasses, darkly

and my face can’t see all of your face

because parts of our faces, our soul-windows,

are blocked by these big black ovals we’ve got on.

And it’s really nice.  Soothing spectacles, new-fangled!

World-dimmer switches with only two settings: on, off.

The “on” setting cuts sun-blasting rays from ouch bright levels

to mellow-yellow-mood levels. Hey this feels okay.

It’s like we’re inside Plato’s Myth of the Cave,

except it’s not a myth; it’s like, we’re really in a cave!

Everything we see is a sweet and comfortable shadow:

the cups of hot chocolate set before us are shadows, 

the first girls we ever loved are shadows,

even our shadows are mere shadows of shadows!

And the dark dark Shadow Bats flap their shadowy wings.

The “off” setting is just too intense. 

Don’t even think about switching to it.

We’d have to squint to survive.