Perfect Equanimity
Look how any mirror will reflect with perfect
equanimity all actions before it.
There is no act in this world that will
ever make the mirror say "no".
The mirror, like perfect love,
will just keep giving of itself
to all before it.
To each passerby,
so polite, so grand,
so compassionate.
How did the mirror ever get like that?
It watched God.
This is an interesting positive spin on mirrors. For a while, I had come to associate the mirror with the body image crisis that is going on in America - the bane of trying to live the phrase, "there is more to life than being really ridiculously good-looking" (Zoolander). Conversely, poetry often reminds us that there is more to the prosaic meaning of things. Poetry uses the quality of language to evoke meanings the reader has not considered, and in that way it challenges us and comforts us. Now I think that while the mirror can reflect insecurities, blemishes, problem parts, etc. it can also reflect the sparkle in your eye, it can be used in photography to capture the moment before the bride and groom see each other, and it can reflect various truths - what it means to look in the mirror with another or alone in the bathroom or in the dark of night.
Look how any mirror will reflect with perfect
equanimity all actions before it.
There is no act in this world that will
ever make the mirror say "no".
The mirror, like perfect love,
will just keep giving of itself
to all before it.
To each passerby,
so polite, so grand,
so compassionate.
How did the mirror ever get like that?
It watched God.
This is an interesting positive spin on mirrors. For a while, I had come to associate the mirror with the body image crisis that is going on in America - the bane of trying to live the phrase, "there is more to life than being really ridiculously good-looking" (Zoolander). Conversely, poetry often reminds us that there is more to the prosaic meaning of things. Poetry uses the quality of language to evoke meanings the reader has not considered, and in that way it challenges us and comforts us. Now I think that while the mirror can reflect insecurities, blemishes, problem parts, etc. it can also reflect the sparkle in your eye, it can be used in photography to capture the moment before the bride and groom see each other, and it can reflect various truths - what it means to look in the mirror with another or alone in the bathroom or in the dark of night.
This Ones For The Girls (2003), Martina McBride
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