In the Glass - Dec 1 2023

In the Glass

Dec 1 2023

My reflection in the window

looks back at me

then looks away.

I follow my eyes

where they take me

until I can't,

imagining

it's I who wills them where.

The ancients thought they worked

like X-ray vision,

superheroes

beaming out lines of sight

and training them on the world.

But we know better.

That they are receptacles, taking it in.

That we see what we want to see

and miss the rest.

That the brain fills in

worlds in our heads.

That I'm still in the glass

searching

wondering

curious,

just as I am

standing here.

I finally forced myself to keep one mercifully short. (Although after writing this, added 4 more lines. My prolixity is incorrigible!)

It's also about time I stopped holding the reader's hand, which my usual conversational style does too much of.

While on the other hand, this kind of poem — less linear, more open to interpretation (which doesn't come so naturally to my logical mind and its pedantic attention to detail) — respects the attentive reader by letting them make of it what they will, which I think can be a much more rewarding experience. It invites re-reading. It leaves space.