And then,
when I looked once again
at the whole presentation—
at the boundless light
and the thing with feathers,
that creature
who's freakish
visage I'd hated—
with just a second's
more hesitation,
a space opened
up in my ossified acuity,
spacious enough
for the thrum
of ambiguity—so spacious
I could no longer see
the thing I was seeing,
but instead,
all I could see was the act
of my looking. All along,
I thought I knew
what it took
to alter one's outlook, but
only then realized
to rewrite the future, I must have
already
redefined the past.