An Altar-like Looking-glass Dimension

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The world which he enters when he writes

Is like a realm of two-way mirrors set

Apart.  This other realm is not his nights

And not his days but neither and then, yet,

Of both at once as in a nightmare, dream

And seer’s vision.   There he leaves behind

The sweat of armpit, suffocated scream

Of five-day work weeks and their hollowed rind.

Among the prissy intellect, élan

Of insight for the fire, and common-sense

He finds his way.  It opens like a fan

In lands of heart’s desire and lacking tense.

  Imagination’s land of sonnets spreads

    For him where love is made of curly heads.

©Phillip Whidden