Mirage, to be reflected— from the French se mirer; from the Latin mirare
Who are you writing to?
Who are you speaking to?
Every question’s pitched
toward a you. Always I and thou,
though no one meets the face
I lower to the sink except its own
reflection glancing back
from the milky porcelain
glazed with water drops,
then glancing up again
through the curtained window
where the one green leaf
at the end of a branch
shakes itself dry and turns
into a hummingbird.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Bowled over by this one, Luisa. Beautiful.
YOU AND I
Words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. —John Locke
Are you talking to me? Are you writing to me?
Answers to questions you pitch into the dark
are meanings I assign to the questions you ask.
Always, you and I, will be at opposite ends
of a half-lit hallway where echoes are as urgent
as the tremulous confessions we burden ourselves
with each time we look into our reflections
on the one-way mirrors we look into when hiding
hurts hurled like hunting knives at target trees.
When I call you, I mean to quickly hold you down,
to find your voice, to shape your feelings, to own
your thoughts, to mould you as I want to have you.
I interpret you through my own lenses and mirror
you as you would me and have our confluence
in this reflection, a dragging into a dungeon
of thought constructing meaning instead of finding
it, and the “You” becomes the “I” held in bondage.
Except than in this conquest, I lose everything.
—Albert B. Casuga
05-20-11