#MIDDLEBURY
The Secret in the Mirror
Alberto Rios
The mirror is dirty from the detritus of dailiness –
I look in the mirror and am freckled.
A week out from being cleaned, maybe two, maybe more,
The Milky Way shows itself in the secret silver,
This star chart in my own bathroom,
Aglow not in darkness but with the lights on,
Everything suddenly so clear.
It is not smear I am looking at, but galaxies.
It is not toothpaste and water spots –
When I look in the mirror, it is writing and numbers,
Musical notes, 1s and 0s, Morse-like codes, runes.
I am looking over into the other side,
And over there, whoever they are, it turns out
They look a lot like me. Like me, but freckled.
About this poem
“Whatever our professional posturing, this poem speaks to the everyday lives we also lead – not cleaning the bathroom sink quite as much as we perhaps should, not always controlling the floss strings of good intentions now turned wild, not vacuuming nearly enough. But even in the mundane, we have, always at hand, surprise, surprise at its most savory in that we have least expected to find it where it is not advertised.” – Alberto Rios
About Alberto Rios
Alberto Rios is the author of “A Small Story about the Sky” (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). He is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, teaches at Arizona State University and lives in Chandler, Ariz.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Alberto Rios. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
