Infared
There are fish that live so deep in the ocean
they can see heat.
They slither waters thick with cold,
using infrared light
to spot the distinctive glow
of their own species.
And there are galaxies
with billions of heavenly bodies
so many light years distant
and traveling so fast away from us
that their light rays
stretch beyond the visible spectrum
and we can map them
only with infrared telescopes.
Some people also have eyes like those
heat-vision cameras
that capture the lava of light
flashing from human flesh.
They sense wavelengths of warmth
so many can’t see.
Zack Rogow is author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays, most recently, Irreverent Litanies. Rogow’s play Colette Uncensored had its first staged reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and ran in London and San Francisco.