The Mirror

The Mirror

I look back
My eyes jump, dart, make every effort to look away
From  the chain of our DNA
Sitting here in the polar cold
It is time, while there is still time

Fingers frozen, numbed by the January winds
Blowing up through the hundred year old pane of glass
I pause my own poetry
Raise the mirror that shows me more, of her and me
And of our love for poetry

And with my nose, whose tip is cold
And with my fingers fighting hard to write
I fight back
At war no more
With the past

Warmed by old words I may have read
But never truly heard
I raise high my white flag
And rest my eyes, in peace on the page which holds years of her steady work with words

The echo of her heart and mind, mirror image of bits of me
For she penned words of beauty, in the back of her chapbook
Beside the photograph of her
Beaming bright, dressed in canary
Her color, not mine
Before dementia came and stole so much
I could close my eyes and swear
Swear, these words were mine
But I would not take, what is not mine
But she has given me, parts of her
I swear

“She takes delight in emptying on paper an
image that haunts her and carving it until
its beauty and truth emerge. Only then
does the poem speak.”

I could close my eyes and swear