A Woman Looks in the Mirror

Say My Name, Say My Name

A woman looks in the mirror with honest eyes

And meets the other eyes

They too are honest and fix her there

They are too honest may be because virgin

Living in-house, in filtered light

Dark pools without reflection.

She turns away, her hand on top of the dresser

The cool of pearls on her fingers

Has the thrill of truth.

She has turned away.

In the house with feathered light

She anyway could not see

How the pearls discrete on their string

Are black-nacreous like her skin.

Her hand holds the pearls

But she changes her mind.

No encirclements today.

She has changed her mind

And her honest eyes meet the other eyes

Points to points.

She lives alone here

In-house, in frosty light

Her good name is dear,

Is honor-bright

She harbors a harbinger-self,

A fée unrecorded,

A dissembling elf
Whose task's unrewarded

Now

Ignorant of  smiles

Bestowed

On  palace guards

She passes beyond

The fateful words

Tosses the ring

In a fairground game

Comes now the Elf:

Say my name,

Say my name

Her laughter a rip-tide

That pools in runnels

With torches be-side

Her she sweeps the tunnels

And finds there a changeling,

Or an infant mild?

Cuckoo in the nest,

Or blameless child?

A pearl of great price,

Subterranean

Starlet,

She redeems from waters

Pierian,

Incarnate

Through a glass darkly

Years of bread and singing

Espied and forgotten

Before the day bell’s ringing

Further back but still ahead

A sight

Herself again

In-house with firelight

Perceiving

The blaze but not the heat

The melody

Without the beat

Her laughter a rip-tide

Voice rich and deep

She inkily in-tones

Messages that keep

Keep her waiting may be

On answering-machines

In palaces ruled by

Quotidian queens

A woman looks in the mirror with honest eyes

And meets the other eyes

They too are honest and fix her there

They are too honest may be because rapt

Living in-house, with fractal light

Dark spools of recurring refractions

She reaches for the pearls–

For what did she want them?

She has forgotten. She has turned away.

The mirror has turned her wit.

She is anxious now and she scavenges

Here and there through drawers

Looking for something she anyway

Thinks she has lost.

Eyes check with the other eyes

Too honest may be because natural

Telling her without a doubt
She has lost it

Somewhere her life goes on beyond this house

With its books and cats, its gilt-edged mirror

And the writing that doesn’t get done

Her friends are not honest.

They are happy these days, too happy

To hold a place for her in their minds.

They are typing their emails in the morning sun.

They are bickering with husbands and wives.

They worry about the children.

They go here and there, do this and that, engrossed.

These friends are not honest

But at night when they sleep

They know what the honest eyes dream

There at the palace

Doors swinging wide

Gates opening now

Before she arrives

Back in-house

In-side the inside story
 Fée remembers

Elf’s ill-gotten glory

Back in the world

Called real

Drivers chase gold

On spinning wheels

Friends in this California city

Are rushing off to jobs

They are writing their books

They are driving their children

They think of her fondly, for

Without a doubt

She has lost it

They know how she will reason with them

And put off answering

The call

They are not tranquil these friends.

Their eyes dart from thing to thing.

In the brilliant California sun

They are everywhere moving and taking.

They do not know how

Her dreams, ever more blanched

By light, are filled now

Like nomads’ tents
With tiny multicolored birds

They know only her rip-tide laugh

Pulling them out to sea

And her eyes, filmy now, devoid 

Of the daily scene

Their dreams though remember

Black-nacreous skin,

Deep bell-tones, her voice

And dreamers dreaming her humility

Rejoice,

Their deadly spinning

halted.

The dreams are not honest, perhaps,

But they know she is exalted.

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