Poem of the Day

Here’s another one from Adrienne Jones. This is from Written in Stone.

The Voice in the Mirror
By Adrienne Jones

I belong to a secret corps of women
with passwords known only to those
in their forties and beyond.
So this is how it is.
We didn’t know!
We didn’t know!

My journey
took me far beyond my native country,
or any I had traveled.
Desire was Paradise at eye level
but the landscape was rocky
and cut my feet up to the heart.

Through its center ran a river.
My battered guidebook said,
“Don’t drink the water;”
but I was so thirsty I drank.
It sickened me for the better part
of a year.

When I strengthened
I set about my escape.

My fragile map said
I could not return the same way.
So I set off through the desert
on wounded feet
and made my way to the woods
where I walked in shadows
along deer trails.

Many times I looked back to Desire,
hearing the river calling,
but I caught dew in laurel leaves
and drank of that.

When I returned to my house
I looked for my face in the mirror
and knew for sure
I’d been lost.
What came back in my place
was an older woman
I hardly knew
who had walked the desert
and trailed the forest deer.

Every day the river called me.

I put my house in order and
after a few seasons it began to feel
like home.
I looked out from my upper window
and scanned the horizon with wondering eyes.
I watched the changing of my hands
and felt the heat begin to steal
into my bed at night,
soaking one shirt
and eyeing another.
I found old Notions scattered about
and discarded them.
The woman in the mirror became
familiar
and friendly, and one day she smiled back at me
and I smiled back and said,
nice haircut,
and she said gently,
do you still want to go back?
I said, I know I can’t go back,
and I don’t want to go back,
but oh, I own the bright beauty of Desire
and the pain which is its shadow.

And she said, yes, you’ve found the secret;
you own it,
it does not own you.

When she finished speaking
I saw my lips had moved.