Robert Gibb: Two Poems

Mirrors Being Elegies To What They Reflect

The back-at-you optics of the looking glass.

Beginning with the one my wife wanted
To run into in her teens, startled awake
In the darkness where it seemed to offer
A way for her to vanish without a trace.

Then the ones a friend was busy visiting
In my dream, lugging his tray and roller
From room to room, painting over mirrors
He said were letting in too much light.

And those old wet-plate glass negatives
Whose images have steadily decomposed,
Like mirrors whose silvering’s all pitted.
The world reflected. The world exposed.

The mirrors now one-way and rearview.


~


On Keeping Secret

“What kind of animal would you like to be?”
The question trotted out
Like a party game for the guests in the room,
Their answers
Kinds of longing or taking sides—
Snow leopard, dolphin,
Whistling swan—each invoked totem
Another dead giveaway.

Behind the lie I told that night lay a kind
Of animal instinct
Alert to the risks of exposure.
Better, it said, to try
And keep the other guests from picking up
My scent,
Out in whatever stretch of wild terrain
I happened to lay claim to.

Copyright 2024 Robert Gibb

Robert Gibb is the author of over a dozen award-winning collections of poetry, including The Origins of Evening (1998, Norton) which won The National Poetry Series. His most recent collection is Pittsburghese (Michigan State, 2024). Gibb lives in Homestead PA, in the Monongahela River valley.