Our House of Mirrors

On the dusty ochre blacktop of the North County Trailway
in the hazy and humid air,
the rainpuddles seemed to hold a different world,
filled with luminosity, sky, trees.
Air, space, clarity.
Form, color, differentiation.

(but what a trick this is,
what an intimation of specialness
where
none
exists,
where everything is special after all.)

the seeming surface of the puddlewater
(its seeming mirrorshine and polish)
(its seeming uniformity and flatness):
all a function of my eyes' poor ability
to resolve the complexity
of the energy
and information reflected from it.

but: one inch to either side of the puddle,
the same light struck the blacktop path:
the same shadows,
colors,
fluctuations.
Being reflected and absorbed
precisely as reflected and absorbed...by the water.
But the bumpy asphalt flatness
was mute and indifferent.

had I eyes the width of football stadiums
and the depth of lake baikal
blacktop would be sheerest silver to me.
Complicated clouds and blue sky
would fill this mirror, too.

the grassy field would
show the world to itself as well.
every surface, in fact, would
mirror every other,
an infinite regress of such size
and multiplicity
that imagination balks and fails.

This is happening right now.
But we can't see it.