Stunning, the way one object reflects another, contingent
on density, distance, medium between, angle of giver to receiver.

How, closer to earth, a bird's clone crystallizes,
and sun through colored glass casts tinted replicas.

Water my recepor of choice—lake, stream, veneer of ice.
Creek water shimmers trees on mud or sand bed

overtop minnows making squiggly doubles
beneath my silhouette as I lean over the bridge rail.

How shadows travel and lengthen as day unravels,
the juncture when a mountain veils an entire valley. 

Motion layers the allure—a fish breaks the pond skin
while waves intersect the sway of tree twins.

The bathroom light on the vinyl curtain imprints green
bamboo on white tile like dark trunks on new snow.

Everything echoes something else: a grimace on a face,
a yawn. Mirrors and glass yield images in reverse.

Even our eyes. Light travels cornea to retina, converts
to impulses, so our brain interprets what looms before us.

Karen L. George is author of five chapbooks, and two poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014) and A Map and One Year (2018). Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Adirondack Review, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Louisville Review, and Still: The Journal. She reviews poetry at Poetry Matters: http://readwritepoetry.blogspot.com/, and is co-founder and fiction editor of the online journal, Waypoints: http://www.waypointsmag.com/. Visit her website at: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.