The Mirror Man | ||
| April 14, 1999 | Stephen Ward | |||
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I look across the room and find eyes meeting me.
A face that hides a soul, the Mirror Man is he. He stares steadfastly back, almost quizzically. As if to pose the question, “Am I all they see?” It certainly is a quandary: to be or not to be? For does not beauty lie in a heart at once perceived? Perhaps they look no further, afraid of what they’ll see. Wary to decide between the Mirror Man or me. The damage has been done. It is a tragedy.
Writer’s Review: Personally, this is my favorite poem. I suppose it isn’t all that great, but in my eyes it ranks right up there with Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” What is it saying exactly? Well, I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide. For me the poem speaks a very clear message that can never be fully expressed in words. Why is it my favorite? Well, aside from all the work and revision I put into it, I like the simple imagery of a man staring into a mirror. When I wrote it, I said to myself, “I want to write a poem about reflection.” Ironic that I should use the real thing to represent the metaphor. The poem was actually built from the last two lines up. I was shaving one day and I thought about the “world of glass” between my reflection and myself. The immediate afterthought was whether the comment had been inspired by something or someone else, because I never considered myself all too deep. The astute reader will notice the irregular number of allusions I made in this poem. Can you find them all? I’ll give you a hint: I already mentioned the poem that inspired one in the second quatrain. Good luck in searching. To date, I’m convinced there are more in there than even I know about… | ||||
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