The Blind Poet

The Blind Poet

He never saw a summer sky

or watched the rain roll off the glass

he didn’t know the shape of blue

or how a shadow’s minutes pass

He sat alone by broken walls

a notebook full of secondhand

he painted lives he’d never touched

with someone else’s eyes and hands

He listened close to passing shoes

the high heels sharp, the worn soles slow

he mapped the weight of tired feet

and guessed where joy refused to go

The voices told him more than light

the cracks in laughs, the tight hellos

the men who joked but clenched their teeth

the women calm with undertows

He’d write of girls with tangled hair

who kissed like they were late for love

of boys who fought their father’s hands

then begged forgiveness up above

He captured youth that burned too fast

and elders speaking soft to ghosts

he named their silence, named their need

then signed it, barely more than most

They called him strange, or wise, or mad

but never asked the cost he paid

to turn the air to aching truth

to feel the world, then not be swayed

He never asked to see their face

he never begged to know their pain

he only wrote it, line by line

then folded back into the rain

And though he died without applause

his papers live in borrowed skin

a thousand lives in second draft—

because he saw what burned within

Not with his eyes, but something more

some darkened gift he couldn’t choose

he made their moments last in ink

then sat alone with all he’d lose

So raise a glass for nameless hands

who carve our tales then fade from view

the blind man who wrote poems like paint.

and saw us clearer than we do