Creative Vision

Creative Vision ‘Tis a pen as blue as Homer’s Mediterranean. How a blind man saw blue, I don’t pretend to know. I usually pretend not to know that he’d been blind. How could he have seen his story to its completion, if he couldn’t have viewed the world? I would rather be deaf than blind.

And yet, for all the power of my sight, there remain things which I have failed to see.

Three years ago I walked with my friend through Antioch Park. Antioch, where Christ’s disciples became Christians. And it just so happened that my friend was to be baptized. He had told me as much, that evening while crossing a pond, the plank beneath him split.

The bridge we were crossing was an old bridge, - though perhaps not so old as Antioch – and her planks had never been changed. Unfortunately, wood rots. Anyway, he fell into the pond, then reemerged in a green film, then reached to grab hold of the bridge, but missed, and submerged again.

Supposedly he showered when he got home, but I don’t know. I left town shortly after that night and haven’t seen him since. But I’ve heard – from where I don’t remember – that he never went through with the baptism. It had always been his mother’s idea, supposedly, and he himself had no interest in attending church. He wasn’t even particularly religious, he said. Again I can’t recall who told me about his decision; in some sense, my memory is deaf. But now I see humor where I hadn’t before.

John couldn’t help but be baptized, for he plunged his head in dirty water in Antioch. I saw the mossy mess myself!