On one level this poem might deal with physiology and anatomy--the strange visual phenomena that a person going blind might experience (e.g. cataracts). At another level the poem is concerned with inner vision or enlightenment. In that respect it is reminiscent of Jack Coulehan's poem The Dust of the West (see this database), in which "my blind father" sees, by means of an inner light, that "the smallest piece of dust / has an interior, a soul . . . ."