The Lens Through Which We See

The lens through which we see ourselves, others and the world at large is focused and colored by a broad and deep array of interior, exterior, individual and collective perspectives. Our personal beliefs, physical bodies, day-to-day experiences, cultural (in the very broadest meaning of that word) experiences, natural environment, and the social infrastructure within which we live our lives are among the influences that create and influence these perspectives.
A poem for you:

This Open Eye
Swollen shut the right
eye seeps semi-clotted
blood that streams
and blotches a map of
hell across the three-
year-old face. Wide
open, the left eye
appears injury-free--
untouched, but
ultimately more
lethal.
Through this open
eye the child sees
the world that has
closed the other.
From This Open Eye: Seeing What We Do
Copyright (c) 2006 by Reggie Marra

What happened to this child? What I'd like you to consider are the myriad influences that inform your intuitive or analytical responses to this question and to the poem itself. What perspective(s) may have led the poet (in this case, me) to write the poem at all, and write it as I did? Trust that your inquiry and any conclusions you may reach or hypotheses you may develop will provide as much, and probably more, insight into yourself than into the poem or the poet.

This is the spirit in which this little chunk of cyberspace begins. I don't know where (or if) it will go from here.

Thanks for reading this far.