Grandpa’s Eye

When I was a girl, I found 

Grandpa’s spare brown eyeball 

tucked inside his sock drawer.  

I held it up against my eye and 

stared in the mirror.  One blue eye 

and one brown eye stared back.

*

When Grandpa was a boy, 

he played marbles with his glass eye.  

He slipped it out from the socket 

and made the girls squeal 

as he flicked it with his thumb 

across the dirt, glass pinging against glass. 

*

He was born with two good eyes, 

but he reached for a Christmas present 

just as one of his brothers passed 

a pair of scissors to their mother. 

*

One winter, when he left the warmth 

of his home, his glass eye 

shattered from the sudden change 

of temperature.  The doctor removed 

the splinters one by one, and then 

he gave Grandpa an eye patch.

*

Once, when my son spent the night at Grandpa’s, 

the glass eye fell into the bathroom sink, 

and Grandpa asked my son to help him find it.  

When my son placed the glass eye 

in his great-grandfather’s hand, 

Grandpa saw the spectacles he’d been looking for. 

*

Last year, Grandpa fell in the hallway, 

in the middle of the night, 

while his eyeball sat in a glass of water 

by the bathroom sink.  The paramedics took him 

to the hospital, but left behind the eye. 

*

When I came to visit him, Grandpa asked me, 

“Where’s my eyeball?” I found it and brought it 

to him.  Grandpa’s eye sat in a glass of water 

on his nightstand all night long, while I stared 

at his other eye with my two blue ones.

In the morning, 

*

I took his eyeball home with me 

and tucked it in my sock drawer.

© 2002

Reflecting on the Grist… the inspiration and the process

In Fall 2002 I enrolled in ENG 313, Creative Writing (Fiction and Poetry) at University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa.  Ian MacMillan taught fiction for one half and Morgan Blair taught poetry for the other–both of them award-winning writers.  It was in Morgan Blair’s class that I learned the worth and weight of every word.  Morgan, writing and publishing as Faye Kicknosway, had been short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.  She was the real deal and had very high expectations for her students.  Although I took the class seriously and benefited from Morgan’s feedback, I had no illusions about pursuing life as a poet, a fact that was clear each time Morgan gave me feedback: This is a story, not a poem!

At the end of the semester, after receiving scathing feedback on poem after poem, I presented “Grandpa’s Eye” as my final read in class.  When I was done, she told me, “That should be published!”  No higher praise.

The poem is inspired by my grandfather’s experiences with losing his eye and the subsequent adventures that followed.  My grandfather refused to allow a “tragic” childhood accident to undermine his passion for life.  I was honored to be at his bedside holding his hand until he breathed his last breath–our eyes locked, as we told one another again and again that we loved each other. 
This was published in Rainbird, 2013