The Payoff

The Payoff Gail Griffin (bio) At the back of my eyes, conesblink out, refusing light. Scrapsof the visible world drop awaylike dead leaves. While I workon my radical acceptance,I wait for the payoff: Ears that can follow, from a pier,the conversation of whales.A nose that can take in juniperberries two miles north. A tonguethat pierces the honey to taste the calyxon a Tanzanian hill. And touch, my god, the dayI reach to stroke—wait, no, somethingreaches to stroke me, ravishing,lightening, the touch for whichmy vanishing life has beena blind and beggarly wait. End Page 64 Gail Griffin Gail Griffin is the author of four books of nonfiction, most recently Grief's Country: A Memoir in Pieces. Her first poetry collection, Omena Bay Testament, won the Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press, which published it in 2023. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals including The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, and 32 Poems, and have been included in anthologies such as Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes. "The Payoff" comes from a chapbook on vision loss. She lives and writes in southwestern Michigan. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press