Jeanie Greensfelder, a psychologist and poet, is author
of Biting the Apple, Penciled In, 2012, and Marriage and
Other Leaps of Faith, Penciled In, 2015. She’s had a poem published on
Writer’s Almanac and in American Life in Poetry. Her poems are in forthcoming
anthologies: Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems, Paris, and 30
Years of the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival; in journals: Askew,
Miramar, Orbis, Echoes, Grand, Kaleidoscope, Porter Gulch Review, Poetic
Medicine Journal, Riptide, Falling Star, and If&When. She
lives in San Luis Obispo, California. Her poems can be read at jeaniegreensfelder.com.
Eyes Closed
by Jeanie Greensfelder
I visit a meditation group to learn
what lures them here. Some sit
on mats, others on chairs. A bell rings.
Silence begins. Inhale, exhale. I try
to quiet my thoughts: I’m hungry, restless
and give in to my urge to peek:
I see faces with masks removed.
I’ve trespassed into the vulnerability
hidden by open eyes.
Yesterday in the checkout aisle, a mother,
carrying her infant, shared his sleeping face:
innocence, guilelessness—our paradise lost.
And here, for this half hour, people come,
sit, and enter that state. Now I’m hungry
to join them. I shut my eyes.
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