First Stars

My eyes were born with cataracts--I couldn't see at all.
The doctors did some surgeries when I was very small.
I wore the thickest glasses but I didn't realize--
Bilateral aphakia (no lenses in my eyes).

The winter that I turned fifteen, a doctor came to town--
A skilled ophthalmic surgeon; one of letters and renown.
He lasered both my eyeballs and he cut through all the scars.
Before I couldn't see the moon--now I could see the stars.

We drove out to my auntie's house, its farmlands clad in snow.
Where in the nigh-time sky there were a billion stars aglow.
The northern constellations and the Milky Way outspread
Looked glorious in ways my science teachers never said.

Orion and his dogs I knew; the Pole star and the Square.
Draconis as he weaved his way twixt cub and mama bear.
The moon was shining in the west, no fuzzy smear of light;
instead, she showed her crescent smile on this December night!

-- JMag Guthrie - 2018-01-08