Originally published in Neologism Poetry #96

(featured poem – click here to read the issue)

Palimpsest

Cross-beams in dusty attic, insulated gaps. By some divine

Providence I don’t fall through. The mirror

Is impressive enough, and will

Fit, snug, in corner; missing a fragment

Sucks the light from behind my eyes, a void in reflection

Swallowing whole

–

Memories. It’s disconcerting, the whole

Reality fades as I divine

Staring at me now, from the future and past, reflection

Freed from mirror.

Greater than me, the fragment

Me overpowers my will

–

A lesson in powerlessness that I will

Try not to forget as the whole

Reason I had before seems like the fragment

Now. Facing divine

Instead of what I thought I brought to the mirror

It’s total reflection;

–

My reflection,

Will,

With possessions all mirror

That part that isn’t whole

The glass house from which divine

Casts stones, making a fragment

–

Back out of me. In my fragment

After this moment of reflection

Something like the divine

Is nothing but a problem that will

Keep the room I meant to fill from ever being whole

It’s in my attic. It’s just a mirror.

–

But in that mirror

Where fragment

Makes known the whole

Problem of perception, my reflection

I fear, will

Never escape the divine

–

Truth of reflection,

Gaps in knowledge, and packed in, pink insulation will

Now forever hold the dust that turned it grey; dark as divine.

–

/

thanks to Christopher Fields of Neologism Poetry for taking a chance on this sestina, and for surrounding it with excellent work.

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