She peers into her glass a toad stares back She steers her wooden stare through bosky grey to fields of furrowed clay shared and scored anew each uncalled-for day With roughshod care time’s rivelled hack reflects through her etched weatherglass
She peers into her glass and sees beyond the dullish stare stares back from ash veneered opacity She holds the stare and starts to float guides her ancient sonde across the pages of her almanac to the crowded footnote of her existential vast extensity
She peers into her glass and passes through floats through the black lights of her eyes and humming a tuneless barcarole drifts into the inner void The faintly azure blue stares back in thin disguise and brushes past the membranes of her soul vibrates the familiar schizoid
Here she sees another face reflecting in a room of glass whose panes touch at the darkness without Whose edges of infinity reflect in truth the greater keenness of her space Whose focus seeks an edge on which to shout but never sharpens its ephemeral mass nor matures its sallow youth
That wretched soul of hers whose heart is filled with rarest art lies wrecked on the low-tide shore midst wrack and mortal ruin waiting for the reaper’s cart The journeyman whose stealth avers the artless truth of life’s assassin The nevermore of evermore
6th March 2008
glass - mirror bosk – thicket, or little wood shared – ploughed [ploughshare]; also shares the image score – notch, gash, scratch; also as in music roughshod – provided with horse-shoes with projecting nails to afford extra grip rivelled – wrinkled [OE] hack – a horse, esp. one in a sorry condition. Also a gash, a notch weatherglass - barometer
sonde – [Fr] device for obtaining information about atmospheric or weather conditions at high altitude
existential – relating to human existence extensity – massiveness or spatial quality in sensation from which perception of extension is derived
barcarole – gondolier’s song, or similar
azure – of a faint blue, sky-coloured
schizoid – one with schizophrenic personality – introversion, tending to fantasise, duality
keenness – sharpness – also as in having an acute or penetrating mind; also intense
ephemeral – short-lived - ie the mayfly whose adult life is very short – often lasting but a single day. sallow – pale yellow [of skin]
wrack – seaweed cast ashore, stranded; also wreck; also vengeance aver – declare to be true journeyman – a hired workman, one hired by the day; also one who is competent at his trade [no longer an apprentice] artless – guileless, unaffected, simple; also inartistic