Singleness, Observed

The Singleness of the Eye

–a sculpture by Paul Friesen, 1981

Matthew 6:22

The eyes don’t face north. All three face up on their limestone pillars of optic nerve. Two also face east into rebirth, one also south into the prevailing wind.

Cobwebs glisten between the pillars.

Gash marks denote the flecks of iris radiating into half-moons of eyes side-on. The pupils are represented by open spaces—tubes carved out of the blond stone. The openness is their receptivity, the “light of the body,” the “body full of light,” by the absenting of the rock.

A shadow now draws across the easternmost pupil.

The southern pillar is cracked a foot up the base, its outer patina of stone peeling away, proving there is no “wholeness,” or rather, that wholeness is only a result of impermanence.

A diaphanous seed pod clings to the easternmost eye.

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