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(Hotel Eden) In Full Light We Are Not Even a Shadow
Which is to say clarity persists in
increments, in the silent space between
color and lens, within parables seen
in the incomplete: straw, hand. Imagine
white valued more than manner as hidden
thought remains obscured. Lower your eyes, lean
forward. Perspectives tilt towards the mean,
suggesting purpose. When we examine
intent, do we find it? The irony
of bottled cork, of sullied paradise,
a coiled wire, the parrot whose voice,
unheard, implicates us. What felony
must we commit to admit the device
in play? Pull or release? The mimic’s choice.
* * *
Notes: “In full light we are not even a shadow” is a line from Antonio Porchia’s Voices.
Hotel Eden is the title of a piece of art by Joseph Cornell. An image may be found here:
http://www.wikiart.org/en/joseph-cornell/untitled-the-hotel-eden-1945
This made its first appearance here in March 2015.
O at the Edges 
Your poetry lends itself to interpretation nicely … I seldom get the same inner reaction when I read one again after a lapse of months. Today I’m grabbed by “Perspectives tilt towards the mean, suggesting purpose. When we examine intent, do we find it?” testing my inner confidence that all will work out as intended. Or will it? And whose intention? I sense Mother Earth taking measures into her own hands and scrubbing herself of a few of the too-many humans. But is this perspective toward the mean or way, way out? And if I am one to be scrubbed away, does that constitute my contribution? Or my defeat?
Thanks for the stirring of thoughts! Perspective on COVID-19 response is an evolving ambiguity.
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Hmm. I hadn’t thought to read this with COVID-19 flavoring the words. It certainly offers a different perspective. But that’s poetry!
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How many images, symbols, linguistic tricks have suggested a purpose that would never be discovered? A lot. But I’m grateful for the suggestions, the mimic’s choice 🙂
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Sometimes a parrot is just a parrot. But sometimes it’s not. 🙂
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