National Poetry Month: April 19th

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact.  I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful —

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles.  I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart.  But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake.  A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her.  She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Reader’s Services)

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