MIRROR MIRROR

I made a breakthrough today, I went to the hairdresser (which is a breakthrough in itself) & I made small talk! I didn't stick my head in a book - I actually talked to the hairdresser. We spoke about utter shit but that's beside the point. I was able to sit down for 20 minutes & look at my reflection without wanting to shatter it or put a bag over my head.

I'm getting older; I get the odd aching joint and the yowie hairs that pop up in strange places, but I'm okay with it...I'm okay. As I sat there I couldn't help saying the following poem by Sylvia Plath. I said it to myself of course, otherwise the hairdresser would have thought I was nuts (suppose I am when you think of it).

MIRROR

I am silver & exact, I have no preconceptions.
whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful -
the eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It's pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces & darkness seperate us over & over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, & reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears & an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes & goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises to greet her day after day, like a terrible fish.

-SYLVIA PLATH-