Encounter

It was such a strange encounter. I was startled, but not frightened. After all, it just took me a second or two to realize that what I was seeing was my own reflection.

But I'll never forget that feeling, as I turned slowly, not thinking about anything in particular ... perhaps about where my bus was, when it would pull up at that corner ... and there was this reflection in the store window, a reflection so much like the image of my grandfather, one I had carried in memory for so many years ...

I had never thought that I looked very much like him. Still, that first glance at the reflection was like seeing him again ... my reaction, as I saw it in that window, was like seeing him reach out for me ... again.

It didn't occur to me to rush home and write about the encounter. I wasn't writing poetry then. But, much later, when I began learning the practice of sitting in a quiet place, waiting for the words to come to me, these are the ones that made their presence known to me:

ENCOUNTER

There was no mistaking the slope

of his shoulders, the shape

of his head; it was my grandfather

staring from the store window

while I stood in sprinkling rain

waiting for an afternoon bus.

I recalled how it was raining

when I had stood in uniform

beside his bed in that darkened

room, how I had wanted to say

things he could not hear, how I

had finally broken and wept.

And now, all these years later,

I watched as he reached his hand

toward me, the unwanted child, then,

as I stood watching his image blur

in the rain against the window,

we knew I had finally become him.

© 2003

(part of my first collection of poetry, Chance of Rain, issued by Finishing Line Press, 2003)

***

Today's word: image

Afterthoughts ... in response to your comments:

And what a comfort that must be, Marti, when, as you say, your grandmother "looks at me from the mirror these days." Oh, and I'm glad you liked the poem, too.

Thank you, Helen, for sharing that touching account of your "encounter" with your great aunt, via the photos documenting her years at Wellesley College, including her heading the Math Department there. How proud you must be of her ... and how nice it is to have a reminder of her when you look in the mirror.