FUNDUS OCULI - A BIRDS’ EYE VIEW

 

Sight, sharp and full, indeed a sheer bliss so divine,

Colours all hues and shades, in form and sheen,

A joy to cherish and behold, sightless peev in pain,

Oculists, the licensed prophetics, views so preen.

Privileged, aren’t they ?peep through pupil so small,

Magnified though, see and profess in light or blight,

Direct or indirect, media permitting, at beck and call,

Images differ yet enthuse, often beyond one’s sight.

Sinuous vessels, pairs of purple and red, silent and still,

Radially wading, fading and thinning out of sight,

Novice confused in thrill, cyanosed, blinking at will,

Opinions often in fights, experts port a common plight.

All in delight he navigates, views around and rewind,

Neophyte in duress, sees nothing groping in vain,

Watching the disc in awe, colour, cup brimming in mind,

Focus fleeting in despair, ending often in no gain.

Pink in health, in sustain, pallor in atrophy and disease,

Cup differs in depth and size, sight in appalling gloom,

Larger or deeper, notches up or down, opinions fleece,

Shifts nasally or an override, bayoneting not so bloom.

Spots of red, dots and blots, spots of bother and alarm,

Trails of weeping, bleeders, tiny or large all in red,

Splinters, Roth spots, flame shaped, all differ, do harm,

These don’t augur well, in fundus, feared, often ignored.

Twigs profuse and bizarre, frail, bleed and, leak for ever,

Proliferate in stress, Eales or veins blocked in thrombosis,

Vitreous in bloods, the looker, the looked, all in dither

Nightmare insight, threadbare sight, then amaurosis.

Leaks seldom in youth, yet profound in aged, yellow or white,

Hard or soft, in Coats, or diabetes, guests uninvited, ingress.

Circinate or in scatter, dyes summoned, lighting the leak site,

Drusen, dry or wet, macula under threat and broken truss.

Newborns spared not, preterms, in pounding distress,

Plus, preplus, rush in disease, retinal insults, all savage,

Lattice or snailtrack, myopes beta noire, flashes, a mess,

Breaks or holes charging retina in perilous cleavage.

Nicknames galore in excess, ocular jargon, funny with epithet,

Avagadros, animals, avians all queue up in health and disease,

Silver, copperwires veil the red, cotton and ink blot the carpet,

Birdshots or cats’ eye a rarity, tigers and bulls seen with ease.

Streaks of angioid, Seigrist, lacquers or horse shoe break,

Tobacco dust or smokestack, cherry reds, salt and pepper,

Gunns or Salus bemuse all, beguiles beyond one’s partake,

Connoisseurs delight and differ, victims sorrow and suffer.

Disease in doubt, adage for ages, Retina the clue and the tale,

Clinicians light in the tunnel, Oculists’ sole, soul and supper,

An organ on view in still and in motion, in stale or hale,

An art so simple, bewildering,yet fascinating indeed for ever.