The Women Trapped in a Convex Volcanic Mirror

The Women Trapped in a Convex Volcanic Mirror

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

Obsidian, a lump of ancient black,

Is held against a woman’s palm.  She grips

Its roughness in her hand, its flesh quite slack

Inside her skin.  She folds her fingertips

Around the rock and turns it so the lens

Can show its other side to us.  It’s sleek

As curved can be.  In vain attempts to cleanse

It of its darkness, polishing made bleak

The stone except that she can slightly see

Her face there in the surface.  She then tries

To see the faces hidden by decree

Of eons, tries to see those other eyes

That peer from blackness many thousand years

Ago.  Alone she sees their long-trapped tears.

~ Phillip Whidden

by phillipw | Sep 22, 2024 | Uncategorized | 0 comments