—Public Domain Photo
—Poetry by William Zaranka
—William Zaranka (1926-2007)
It’s six feet by six feet, the mirror
I help hoist into a pick up,
Delivering it because he’s paid cash for it
Out of my house to his house.
Leering, he promises to hang it up over his bed.
I slip as we prop and angle the mirror
On furniture pads, tilting my house on its porch,
Upending the neighbors who sit watching
A cat claw for balance on solid ground.
He drives in the cab of his truck,
I sit on the deck in back, wind flicking
My hair in the great mirror now being driven
Out of the city, which seems to be shrinking
Into a tighter and higher bundle of bricks,
Its skyline being replaced gradually by sky,
Blue sky, and so many parachutists hung up
In tree tops they seem to be clouds.
The world is more pleasing on its ear,
In motion, and reversed, as now the superhighway
Forks off like the thumb of a hitch-hiker
And the road turns to dirt;
now all nature is waltzed
On the shocks of the truck, and the hayfield cows
That have gathered in the mirror
Are rocked as they chew, or buck like horses
When a pothole bounces the truck.
Which is to say
The disposition of the mirror
Is a form of power over nature, while saying so
Is an ignoring of certain terrible
Natural certainties
like the tow-head
Squinting now through the crotch of his slingshot
At a magpie—or is it at my mirror?
A moment will tell, for either the magpie
Will rise checkered out of its pecked cow carcass,
Or it will shatter and fall into a thousand
Magpies.
But neither happens.
We are almost there,
And I begin to wonder, what kind of a man
Bolts a mirror over his head?
Will the mirror stay up? Will the ceiling?
What about that man’s mistress? Imagine
Her scared blue eyes staring up
Into the heaven of his pumping ass—
And his eyes,
all pupil, staring back
Into hers from the oval of his hand mirror . . .
Seeing it for the first time from that angle,
How could she not regret it all,
Even the bastard children?
I’m sicker than he is, I think, imagining
Things like that, as already the pick up
Honks its horn, six children rush
Pell-mell out of a whitewashed farmhouse,
Scattering six chickens, and a soap-faced woman skips
From the halting porch cradling twins
In her arms—
or are they magnolia blossoms
Gathered into pillowcases?
“These fell while you was away,” she says
To her husband squinting at her as she snaps
Two fistfuls of cambric at the sky.
And instantly the air is awash with blossoms,
Chickens, children, kite tails, sun motes—
And I believe whatever the mirror reflects
Is true, and whatever is not
May by the mirror be made lovely
Though never true,
being
Half in love with this world, half
With a vision of it.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
― Robert Frost
____________________
—Medusa
For more about William Zaranka, go to obits.nj.com/us/obituaries/starledger/name/william-zaranka-obituary?pid=98289378
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