Mirror, Mirror…
by Odin Roark

Mirror, mirror off the wall,
who’ve you seen the most craven
of them all?

How portable your travels,
from storefront windows,
to dead-quiet water surfaces,
you remain vanity’s evil sister.

We thrust our egos willingly,
even as we treat you as a non-entity,
a mere reflective surface,
yet…

Your nocturnal savvy--
your ability to slip into our dreams,
to shake the very foundation
of our arrogant consciousness,
our daytime persona of reality,
our screaming reflection,
muffled by REM periods of
answers to questions
we dare not ask during consciousness--
is so perceptive.

So shaken are we upon waking,
our mirrors of self-image we dare not face,
now indelibly imbedded in our inherent wandering,
a revealing only we know.

We start another day.

We pass more storefront windows,
gaze into our morning black coffee,
perhaps a walk through Central Park
passing the mirror-like duplicity of the lake,
realizing inertia and purpose are incompatible.

Our desk top monitor,
the boss’s glass enclosed family portrait,
the spit shine of a supervisor’s shoes,
even the toilet bowl in revealing light,
there we are.

Perhaps we need come at these reflections sideways,
these environments of foreboding shadow,
where we might sneak a view of our shortcomings,
see hidden truth and know it’s okay to ask
questions we are afraid to posit.

But…

Perhaps that’s only possible after we
avoid completely the reflective surfaces
as friend,
as us,
as truth,
as the one we deem as real,
opting instead for the inner person
the non-reflective entity only we know,
the person who knows a reflection
is but a surface defense.

Mirror, mirror…