Poetry |

“Little Mirror”

 Little Mirror

 

 

 The shard flared beside a tidepool

 between boulders and clumps of kelp …

 

 Turned and lifted, set down

 many times, its sides softened

 

 by shifting currents, the shard

 left to face last night’s moon, its push

 

 and pull, returned her full face.

 Morning light travels to the bonded

 

 silver backing, bright as an Arctic island map,

 salt-eaten and stone-chipped under glass —

 

 transparent ponds (pinholes) and small lakes (where torn)

 now part of me, where I see myself

 

 up through a past, its tarnished surface

 a sparse tundra across thawed terrain.

 

 On the gray flipside, its imperfections make

 a constellation of tears and pinholes

 

 across stellar distances

 from the shard’s tilting drift.  I imagine

 

 stories from a mirror, faces from a room,

 how someone saw themself

 

 and what they faced walking away,

 aware and unaware of destinies, how

 

 someone tossed a cracked mirror

 into the bay, how an undraped mirror

 

 with its trapped soul fell in a village room …

 the shard from a lob of glittering light,

 

 shattered portrayals revolving through depths,

 a settling glimmer on the floor of the bay,

 

 then a fish swimming close

 to the image of something familiar,

 

 but from another world, this molten

 phenomenon, which might be wreckage

 

 from a lighthouse keeper’s mantle,

 or refugee’s reminder, what sank unwanted …

 

 shard of the forfeited, roll of a die, not

 like anything else from the tides.

 

 If I don’t take it, I thought, it might

 never give back a human face, my face

 

 among others once reflected there,

 the momentary thoughts, the memories

 

 conjured, but never the mirror’s perspective:

 here we see ourselves, as all reflection

 

 here — the reversal — but true the returning,

 left eye is right eye of who I am

 

 traveling up through glass.  I hold the shard

 close to read resemblance faithful to the figure

 

 from the bonded, pitted silver below the surface,

 and staring into the island map — not

 

 as through a windowpane, seeing the world

 past my reflection — I see distances, nonetheless,

 

 a reflection about a face how far to me

 from this object of witness, of instant erasures.

Contributor
James Brasfield

James Brasfield’s third book of poems, Cove, was published by LSU Press in 2023.  He lives in Belfast, Maine.

Posted in Poetry

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