Ring Around The Iris
By Zarah Parker

There’s a ring around my iris
that tangles into muted green,
the kind not found in newly born
forestry because a forest is too deeply
bright. It is like a single leaf that has fallen
from its home and is halfway
alive and greeting death.
The green bleeds to brown,
the color of the fur from a doe
resting in direct sunlight. And from there
we find a red that is not red,
but a brown that is found in the rock
caught in the middle of a mountain
where a river cut through it.
All colors merge into
a final ink pot, which grows
and tightens.

The ink pot is used to write
the world around me with not
words, but visions.

And in the vision of a mirror:
soul meets flesh.