Nov 11/22: reflections on a dream

He stands before the bathroom mirror,

Markedly different than the night before,

The surface marred, etched, scratched.

The perpetrator of this act unknown.

He’s not sure, in fact, that it wasn’t him.

So much of his day (these days) is spent dreaming.

So much of his night consumed with sleepwalking.

He runs his tired hand over the surface.

The smooth, skidding shininess of yesterday

Now 80 grit rough, not unlike his stubbled face

He struggles to see.

The defacer has rendered the mirror useless.

Damaged goods.

Its deep non-healing wounds

Yielding a dense fog,

A grief-torn reflection.

Yesterday’s transparent clarity now transforming

To milky obscurity.

Once clear images, now merely implied,

Like incomplete childhood drawings, begging imagination’s work.

As his eyes again scan the surface

He wonders, are these scribed scratches wounds or words?

A story of suffering or performance poem?

The mirror is sad, weeping in a way. He wonders why.

He doesn’t know (or maybe doesn’t want to know).

Instead he turns his thoughts to

The expansive extent of this work, this canvas.

No surface left untouched.

No corner or edge ignored.

He notices the strange beauty of it all -

A kind of chaotic order of swirls and circles and squiggles.

A sensuous cipher defying interpretation

There’s something about it he can’t (or won’t) put his finger on.

And then

A beam of morning light breaks through the window,

Dancing across the wall and glass.

The surface absorbing, not glaring, not blinding.

And, as he stands before the bathroom mirror,

A sense of awe dawns, befriending his frustration and grief,

And he surrenders to his soul’s soaking.