Illuminated

There was nothing offhand in the fish’s
gilded rupture of the surface. It came to you
the way a meadow is run over with wind
at just the time a cloud shuts off the sun, like something in a plot
might have to happen
for a character’s words to move you to tears.
What was the word you used
for being in the glass-cased collection
of the scripts? Something fished
in you for a place
to act, vanished to effects
where you’d have asked for causes.

ξ

I thought a mirror 

I thought a mirror not registered,
until it was,
would be the one for unextracted relations.
I thought the mirror glanced over was close to the deciduous
face of lakes, whereas a mirror counted upon for supplemental light
would  eventually be covered over with a cloth. How long
did the mirror need to be, how wide? I never thought the mirror
was ever more than half of something captive somewhere
else. And I know I would have thought
less of the mirror
if not for this.

ξ

Sarah Gridley is the author of four books of poetry. She is an MA candidate in theological and religious studies at John Carroll University.