No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!
― Charles Dickens, ”A Christmas Carol”
Through the window, I see myself,
dead. The white sheet doesn’t cover
my feet, and they stretch, stupid and pink,
off the edge of the gurney. There is too little
callus on them. They should be dirty
from walking the world. What a waste to die
with clean feet. The earth would not be
so covered in dirt if we were supposed to stay clean.
And there I am, facing away from the corpse.
So human to want to turn away. My sleeves
are rolled up, but my hands hang empty.
And here on the street, I see in the window
some semblance of my face,
not quite transparent, but substanceless.
I pick up a rock small enough to throw,
big enough to break the glass. No.
I drop the rock, untie my shoes instead.
This poem is a response to a picture, part of Rattle’s Ekphrasis challenge …
http://www.rattle.com/images/ekphrasisbernal.jpg
I saw that photo challenge too, but now I’m not going to enter 🙂 Great job, so much of the perspective of the photo captured in your poem, and I’d go so far as to say, the multiple perspectives make it even deeper than the photo.