"Children on roller skates, Woman buying flowers"

May you feel reverence today. May you be a beautiful moving cloud in a pink sky.

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Miracle Glass Co.
by Charles Simic

Heavy mirror carried
Across the street,
I bow to you
And everything that appears in you,
Momentarily
And never again the same way:

This street with its pink sky,
Row of gray tenements,
A lone dog,
Children on roller skates,
Woman buying flowers,
Someone looking lost.

In you, mirror framed in gold
And carried across the street
By someone I can’t even see,
To whom, too, I bow.

"Miracle Glass Co." by Charles Simic, from A Wedding in Hell. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994.  

Art: Wounded Eurydice by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1868/70

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Creative Invitation

This poem winks toward our impermanence, our pure transitoriness. It points out the passing nature of all things with a very light touch: we might all be beautiful moving clouds reflected in glass. We may all even be briefly framed in gold.

1. Take a posture of bowing: reverence, respect, recognition, toward something mundane.

1. Choose one object in your home and sing its praises.

2. Sit in front of a mirror for five minutes and draw your own face.