Moonshine Blue

I couldn’t remember the moon so blue. Or the clouds so vividly sculpted. Or the chest of Pirate, my blind, tuxedoed cat, so bright a white.

I’ve worn glasses for 40 years. In style, they’ve run from John Lennon wire-rims to Buddy Holly headgear. Prescribed corrections grew almost annually.

I was recently tested for my responses to glare. First, came bursts of painful light, then I was asked what I had seen. Like Manfred Mann, I was thoroughly “blinded by the light.” Cataract surgery was scheduled for each eye.

Here’s where we flow “Into the Mystic,” to quote Van Morrison. Once the right eye was done, everything was brighter, bluer and sharply etched. But when I looked through just the left eye, everything remained coated by a thin veil of monkey-dung brown. Kinda like the cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Déjà Vu” album.

This sepia veil had been growing, unnoticed, in both eyes. But lens replacements cleared my sight.

Yet how many images, landscapes and facial expressions had been dimmed or lost? This old rocker will never know.