Unscripted Surfaces
The window frames a mirror-lake
In the room, a desk, oak that still
Calls to its sisters, it suffers the fate
Of use and wear, the many hands
That have laid on it, the careless cups,
The lamps and trinkets and it is full
Of holes. Once it was alive with beetles
And their larvae who pupated and are
Now gone. I know because I knocked
On the wood to see if there was any frass,
The fine sawdust of their droppings,
Nothing, all clear.
Like the desk the lake is ever changing,
All the while appearing to look the same,
Its secrets are in written in mist on water,
The desk does not communicate
Though it holds within its innards an abandoned
Labyrinth of tiny bore holes that appear immutable.
I am tied to the two truths of the wood beneath
My hands and its sister paper page
And the lake glistening with possibilities.
My stores wander across these imprinted surfaces.
Author of six collections, Jean O’Brien’s latest one is Stars Burn Regardless (Salmon Pub. 2022). Work is regularly published in magazine and anthologies, she won the Arvon Award, The Fish Award and placed in many others such as The Forward (single poem). Website:www.jeanobrienpoet