Opposite the Mirror
by Henry Walters

Like sticking the fingers in the foci of a cassette tape and spinning the wheels in opposite directions. Eyes turn to face each other, unspooling. Dark ribbons on the floor. All my life I hardly knew what to make of them. Blinking together. Here, the one black orb of the east and there, the one black orb of the west. The light from the windows is gray. The sun is not up and the moon is down. Traghetti lie motionless, tied up to the dock, their uncarved prows rising black out of the canal. The brow of a footbridge stretches taut. Water so still, there seem to be two bridges. A laundry line droops empty above them. Higher up, a violin begins to practice. Scales, arpeggi, rising and falling, now double-stops, now double-time, then a song. You take the high road and I’ll take the low road. Humming along, my voice echoes way far away—not in the throat, but in the outer ear, as a stranger’s does.

Out of the country, I missed the summer heat,
Fall colors, the stench of rotting pears on the lawn,
Thanksgiving football with my aunt and uncle
For fifteen minutes in the snow. Among other things
While I was gone, my beagle ate a dead deer,
My brother got himself a band, a girl
Stopped waiting for me, and my mother found
The “Happy Hoosiers” Christmas tape we made
Of family folk songs—terrible quality,
A breathy oversound that could fog glass,
And my four-year-old soprano piping up
Beneath, singing the call and the response:
“Mister rabbit, mister rabbit, your eyes
Are mighty red — Yes, bless God,
I’m almost de-ead.” She sent it to me.

A body-span of twine
Will string this bow.
The tips bend toward each other
Head to toe.

Next to the ice-glazed stump
Of hickory
Two captivated flints
Stare back at me.

Straighter than the look
Cinching two eyes,
The string snaps through the ears
And the rabbit dies.

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