Pam Hill, _Earth, into Worlds_ + _Teaching Her Mirrors

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Earth, into Worlds
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The girl and I sit along the bank
and she asks questions
I cannot answer.
How many fish are in the river,
who pushed the trees in,
where will they stop?
Her fingers tug at a rock in the dirt,
raise it and send it a few feet away
into the stream. If there were time,
and more moments like this,
I would teach her to love water
in all forms. What flows through her body,
topples from the sky, splits mountains
into canyons, earth
into worlds. I would teach her that what divides us
also spills us into one another.
That what drifts forward
drifts backward, what leaves
as an ending comes back
as a beginning. Water
reincarnates the world.
And here where we sit, the girl and I,
has been a desert,
has been an ice field,
has been the moon.

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Teaching Her Mirrors
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She is curious about mornings.
How I stand in front of a wall, gazing into it,
making motions with my hands.
She watches them move to my cheeks,
my eyes, covering the skin with colors she can't
see. And when the wait is too long,
her patience eroded by each stroke of rose,
she lets out a small whimper and rises
to my side, balancing her weight with front paws
on the vanity. She sees two of me.
Worse, another dog in my double life.
When I lay down my brush and tap on the glass,
her large round eyes shift from my finger
to the face it seems to touch,
the intruder dog who moves as she moves,
blinks as she blinks, opens its mouth
to pant in frustration as she shows her own tongue
and whines. She is betrayed. Frightened
by duality. I pull her against me,
kiss her nose while her tail wags
and she tries not to watch it all happen.
Tries not to look into the glass.
She wants only to feel, not to see.
And I cannot teach her illusion and light,
image and imagination, reality and dream.
I would first need to learn them myself
and by then she would be only a photograph
I still cry over, and my own face
would avoid mirrors, its reflection
all marrow, and line.

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Pam Hill
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Next in ring: ...a poem in this room by J.V. Foerster...
Back to room: Canadian Central Pacific Coast, a Fjord
Back to AgD: Return to Agnieszka's Dowry Welcoming Room