In the faraway afternoons of mood
while you are attempting to chain
the snarl of beast in your blood,
cramped over the dark waters again --
what does your glazed absorption see
in the slow, deepening underwater mirror?
The pale pearl features staring back at you,
holding you rapt to force you to the clearer
sight you have tried to claw from yourself;
the long, dark ribbons of fernlike hair
moved as by a wind, floating in the gulf
of adamant seas of brain, the opal-bare
indifference of smile, the sinuous ripple
of mooncold flesh, the gemmed and remembering eyes,
the beckoning fingers, languid in the dapple
of current-glint, the surf of drowned sighs?
This is your time. Now there are no more easy
escapes for you. What you look into and through
is I. It will always be I. The world grows hazy
as you topple down to the certain fate you always knew.
by Bonnie McConnell
Legend, Vol. 1 No. 2, Spring 1972, p. 58
