What you are looking through
Poem 2 of 2026 Poetry Month
“Before fixing what you are looking at,
check what you are looking through.”
—Mark Nepo
I caught snippets of the conversation, if one could call it that. A woman's eyes unfocused and staring as she spits out condemnation through her mask over the cold dead breakfast plates. Bacon hardens, Eggs sags. Two pillars of salt wonder how to escape the pleather bench seat prison -- blink blink fidget as the self-proclaimed prophet hurls mudpies of advice, arrows of warning into the space between. Time undoes its belt buckle, lets its heaving belly out over the waistband. "You'll never know what they did to me, how they made me the way that I am, how they ..." Torrent of blame fills the crevices surges the seams, pulls down the shades, dousing the room in dim damp residual rage. "I did everything for them everything I could, but what else could I do?" Sentences loop and flutter back from her lips like cassette ribbon blowing on the pavement. We're closing up the waitress interrupts, cutting into the recording, snapping the spell. Peeling herself like a bandaid from the booth, the woman insists "I've got this," leaving the disintegrating piles of salt to straighten the mess, to sort out the tip.
Mark Nepo’s quote above is about how our viewpoint, our emotional state, our prejudices impact the way we live, act, think and more.
How do you help yourself see the world more clearly?