By: Edward D. Miller
The view’s beauty speaks
for itself.
It requires no words
from you.
The view wants to ruminate and reflect
upon itself.
It requires no words
from me.
And even if someone decides to overlook it,
they will find that they will move in slow motion
and at a certain point they will be transfixed
by the slanting late afternoon light
that both blinds and enlightens.
The view is an object
that morphs into itself over and over.
It doesn’t depend on where I stand.
The view invites you to it
and at the same time
the view ignores you.
It doesn’t depend on your camera phone.
My presumption of what a view provides
doesn’t dictate its contours and tones.
It doesn’t depend on how you are feeling.
The view is mercury; the view is marble.
It requires no words
from me or you.
Edward D. Miller was born in Brooklyn. He currently lives on Cape Cod with his husband and an adamant Chihuahua named Laramie. Miller writes creative nonfiction as well as poetry. His chapbook The Moment and the Sequence is forthcoming and The Rock in the Middle of the Road was published last year. He teaches performance, media, and film at the City University of New York.
I started writing this poem at the beginning of the Pandemic. I live on the edge of a National Park and the perspective that was so familiar to me became instantly unfathomable and distant. It seemed as if the surroundings and I were caught in a loop of winter that refused to end—spring remained unlikely. I turned to panoramas and snapshots for comfort but the message was clear: I needed to respect the chaos and order of the environment even more. The only way to represent its garish restraint and determined indifference was to indulge in the impossibility of such an endeavor. I realized that “the view is its own mirror.” And thus, I found solace in accepting my status as an onlooker.