Kaleidoscope

While Miroslav Holub, in his broad lamentation "Although," (posted here at the Treegap) says that one cannot enter the same poem twice, I disagree.  You may not always come out with the same poem, but I do believe it's possible to enter into and figure out how you feel about the broader meaning of a poem and change the way you originally envisioned it.

In the next few days I hope to challenge, re-envision and have fun with Holub's Although.  Meanwhile, here is a poem I entered twice, once at age twenty one and then now.

A New Mirror

At twenty one I sat languid
like mercury the solid
and the liquid.
Lethargy
seeping into the chair
spreading like a chorus of yawns.

Now a woman evades my effusion
collecting her wrinkles
as she does herbs from her garden
with the symmetry of a zebra
eroding in the floodplains of their skin.

Time transforms, at times domesticates
even the most youthful of souls.
And then there is my mother--
transformed yet undomesticated
she goes her own way these days.

Now I stand powerfully in tree position
look down at my upturned palms,
sink down, rise up, breathe and fold.
Metamorphosis begins within
and ends only in self resignation.
I choose plank, upward dog
and breathing in and out again
as a path
on a mat
to everlasting beauty.