YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR AND YOU SAY

YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR AND YOU SAY

You look at yourself in the mirror and you say

I’m dying and he is too. Kind. Blind. Bliss.

Two in one. One in two. What does that

add up to? I forget. I remember. I regret. I rejoice.

Think I’m going to share my voice with him

if he’s got anything to suggest. Horrid world, rest.

At least for tonight. Lifeboats in their nursery,

Crows in their nest. Does that feel real? Your guess

is as good as mine. But it’s quiet now. I

can hear the night breathing in the dark souls

of the tenants next door. River move me. River flow.

The stars are whispering something in their sleep.

It’s deep, but that’s a cheap rhyme to live up to.

I’m being focused by death on the window.

One fly woken by the furnace from death, one

star still trying to take my breath away, and it has.

Big space out there. When you die do you dwindle

or expand? The kind of question a child would ask.

It’s so simple nobody has to guess. Let it pass.

PATRICK WHITE