Re * flec * tion

painting by pablo picasso

Re * flec * tion

“There are two ways of spreading light--

to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

--Edith Wharton.

Our first mirrors were polished obsidian,

then polished copper or bronze, but

it wasn’t until after the death of Christ

that we began to refine the quality

of our reflections, when metal-coated

glass mirrors, backed with mercury,

began to show up in Lebanon--and of course

the Romans took them home immediately.

The more modern silver backed mirrors

were developed in Germany in 1835, where

they learned to apply the reflective coatings

onto the back of the glass.

In the cities we are virtually surrounded by

reflective glass, so whether walking or driving

we habitually, often surreptitiously, glance

at our image in motion.

“It is the city of mirrors, 

the city of mirages;

at once solid & liquid,

at once air & stone.”

--Erica Jong

Ever watch a parakeet being fascinated

by the “pretty girl” in the glass,

or a dalmatian sitting patiently by the hour

staring into a wall mirror, waiting

for the spots to move?

I have a four-way folding mirror 

in my bathroom, and I love to fold it 

so that I can view both profiles, 

or the back of my head.

We all aspire to be magicians who can

manipulate the smoke & position the mirrors,

trying hard not to fall into any of them--

we all know what happened to Alice

and Timothy Leary, and certainly we all have

faced those funhouse image mornings when

our distorted features looked like Dali paintings.

“Life is for each man a solitary cell whose

walls are mirrors.”--Eugene O’Neill.

Sometimes in my daydreams I am that guy

with mirrors pasted to the tops of his shoes

standing very near the young women in their

billowing Summer dresses.

Has it ever occurred to you 

that several of your mirrors have seen 

you naked many more times

than your lover or spouse? 

How many possible paramours have you 

passed up after you realized

they wore mirrors on their foreheads, 

reflecting back to you 

who you thought you were?

I have always been fascinated 

by those abstract paintings depicting 

someone holding a mirror up to a mirror, 

and the reflected repeated images

line up, bouncing back & forth, 

each time diminishing in size 

until it becomes microscopic.

I think of life that way,

and life between lives,

where God, or Dagwood Bumstead,

or Cosmo Kramer holds 

in His trillion hands 

multiple infinite mirrors, 

filling our skies 

with reflected images

of extinct galaxies, 

and our mortal hearts

with delicious dreams

of a Continuum. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on Poetry Jam

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