The reverse side also has a reverse side.
……………………….. —Japanese Proverb
The Reverse Side
It’s why when we speak a truth
some of us instantly feel foolish
as if a deck inside us has been shuffled
and there it is—the opposite
of what we said.
And perhaps why when we fall in love
we’re already falling out of it.
It’s why the terrified and the simple
latch on to one story,
just one version of the great mystery.
Image & afterimage, oh even
the open-minded yearn for a fiction
to rein things in—
the snapshot, the line of a frame.
How do we not go crazy,
we who have found ourselves compelled
to live with the circle, the ellipses, the word
noy yet written.
by Stephen Dunn
from Different Hours
W.W. Norton and Company, 2000