Will Cordeiro
REFLECTING POOL
Sun skews its grid on this reflecting pool
which snakes and interlaces makeshift veins
as, underneath, a loose brown leaf or two
has magnified—tilts sideways in my brain.
Beyond the funhouse traps of any theorem,
the void discharges spectra. What fixed point
might atlas any locus swayed off wayward
before a surge of daylight snaps? A coign
of shadow doubled on this serum summons
a room in which a gazer with a troubled look
looks past me at the errant clouds cascading
in my head, a vast confection, sandwiched
between the surfaces below me and
imprinted glyphs above. My eyelid twitches.
A bird, adrift, negotiates the space
where, warped, two ghostly faces gloss a third.
Or are these auras all my own? They lattice
brume and scud across a counter-matrix.
A mirror’s penetralia that scatters,
that splinters out of reach. The fallacies
of some lefthanded world get buried right
up to the hilt. Each rotten leaf, each silky
cloudbank cruises on a level. Dust
settles over emulsifying flecks. Divulges
what we’ll all become: a breeze’s obbligato.
As if in some upended snowglobe, glowing
silt sinks downward. This addled dreck is me:
I’m fused to matter—matter’s a conundrum
which suspends swum holograms. Eyes focus
and unfocus. Water winks. The seen world makes
the soul vertiginous and drunk, says Plato.
Seeing through myself into the mulched pool
bottom, my ego beckons to its broken echo.