Blackout into Sunlight

I didn't know
it would happen by the mirror --
wiping Noxema off my face,
my fingers making wide strokes in the jar,
the cream sweeping into white cliffs,
the deep blue of the jar behind them.
I was seeing something real in my mind.
The world got off me in front of the mirror --
a passenger rushing from a train
and when I struck my head on the bedpost
which tree
was it
I was running toward
wanting to feel the sun coming through its branches?

© 1995 by Yaedi Ignatow

Yaedi Ignatow is the author of a volume of poetry titled The Flaw (Sheep Meadow, 1983).