Red Dory Eyes

Clearstories

24×30 in

Archival Inkjet Print

2019

$1,750/set unframed

Red Dory Eyes by Naila Moreira

Cyttopsis rosea

The eyes are the window to the soul

but what soul is this,
emotionless, seeing
not us but prehistory’s
depths of sea

gazing across
unreachable past

a message
but veiled in glass

The eye sees a thing more clearly
in dreams than the imagination awake

muppet-bright,
playfully bobbling
on weirdly opposite
sides of flat skull

child’s play
in all its seriousness

My eyes are an ocean in which
my dreams are reflected

in color of coral,
garish,
rare,
scraping the bottom
to make clouds out of sand

The eye is the jewel of the body

a fish is the jewel of the sea
split, cooked, plated
straight from earth’s furnace

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul

and what more ancient
than a fish?

castle, sculpture, urn
poured from waves
that scoured time for ideas

cartilaginous lens
begun in the Cambrian
adapted to see
through obscurity

They seemed to be staring at the dark,
but their eyes were watching God

a flower, a fruit,
blooming silver, pink, red,
plucked from dark gardens:
creation to consumption

even these waters
a hellfire or heaven
fueled by burning
until time and sight end

italicized text: anonymous proverb; Leonardo da Vinci; Anna M. Uhlich;
Henry David Thoreau; Ralph Waldo Emerson; and Zora Neale Hurston