THE IMAGE ON THE MIRROR

THE IMAGE ON THE MIRROR

Sit. Feast on your life.

---From “Love After Love”, Derek Walcott

Although this invitation will prolong our wait

in the cold antechambers that we surround

ourselves with, we will cautiously accept it. 

Why not? Sitting here, staring at a kaleidoscope

of the many faces we have constructed to meet

other faces, I celebrate a love affair with myself. 

Who else will do that for me? There were lovers,

and there were lovers, but they held on to their

own chisels to pare and scrape their own image 

of what they could have and hold not unlike

a wild-eyed Pygmalion sculpting flesh onto his one

desire, a Galatea of his rawest wants and dreams. 

I will sit and wait for the feast of all feasts

to be served on my table, my head on a platter,

my heart seasoning a bowl of hope, a soupçon 

of little mercies that lovers often do: a salving

of hurts, a troth of endless fealty, a promise

that the image on the mirror is finally, only mine. 

---Albert B. Casuga

06-21-11