Midnight at the Optician’s
After hours, in the dark,
the shop watches itself.
Frames on racks
ranged in rows —
plastic, titanium, rimless —
try to outstare each other.
The couple in the poster
by the door gaze dreamily through
spectacles far out to sea,
don’t blink, not even in the sudden strafe
of headlights from the street.
Dazzle flick-searches the shadows,
uncovers no secrets.
The computer on the receptionist’s desk
maintains a vacant stare.
The letters on the charts
in the examination room don’t spell a message
for the great globe of eye on the wall,
with its blue curve of iris
its map of blood vessels.
Faraway, the optician turns in her sleep,
squints through the lenses of her dreams.
A drunk stumbles in the doorway,
releases a stream of light onto the step.
Penny Ayers lives in Cheltenham. She has won prizes in the Wells Festival of Literature International Poetry Competition and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2013 and has been published in Brittle Star, The Dawntreader and ArtemisPoetry. She helps run the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.