They turn the great mirror
Crystal, smooth -
And whispered from a jungle past
Tightly folded and mutually imagined
It is carefully wrapped
And hidden in burlap legends
Amongst the colored beads and figurines
And mounds of dry purple and black corn
Their fast tiny hands reach back
As if it were only yesterday,
And judgment was an arrow drawn
From a quiver of splintered sunlight
With smiling grins and hands
Making rapid signings of the cross
upon their chests
They are apparitions
From a place where light and darkness
Don't exist but sliver together
Like shimmering schools of fish
And are better represented by terms
Like ‘cool and hot'
Then ‘guilt and sorrow'
They move about like butterflies
Combing out matted energy
And murky dark matter
With the flutter of their wings
They speak with the tongues of parots
Yet you recognize the voice...
And the mirror is a lens,
A tight drum skin of water,
A solid block of polished stone,
Or the purity of unrequited love
On which all shadow is dispatched
to the cool song of the forest
and the hot belly of the jaguar
And when decision sheds its bleached bones
and your gaze is fused to the infinite horizon -
The mirror will still be there
to remember