Self-Refracted

It’s a lazy March snow I’m mirror to.
Monkeyballs clogging the gutter. Snow-mold
on the not-grass. I can feel in silhouette
that dog’s earnest pooping a yard away.
My son’s a kind of reflection tinged
with resistance, and I don’t blame him.
Who doesn’t love a shiny surface, a beetle’s
rainbowed shell, or insect’s eye?
Who doesn’t want something
beautiful looking back?
But for me, it’s a starling in an empty sycamore
and nothing budding yet.

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash.

Catherine Wing

Catherine Wing is the author of two collections of poetry, Enter Invisible and Gin & Bleach. Her poems have been published in such journals as Poetry, The Nation, and Tin House, and included in Best American Erotic Poems and Best American Poetry. She teaches at Kent State University and with the NEOMFA, the nation’s only consortial program in Creative Writing.