Mirror(s)

~ MIRROR(s) ~

Each day the vain Queen consulted her Magic Mirror, 

"Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" 

and as long as the Mirror answered, "You are the fairest of them all," 

Snow White was safe from the Queen's cruel jealousy.  

(Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937 film)

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My mirror is not magic, thank God!  And I rarely look in it these days, now that I am stooped over, and need to consciously lift my eyes to see myself.  Long ago, I even looked at my reflection in glass windows as I walked by.  Do reflections attract you?  

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I'm attracted to mirroring in nature--like the mirror image on water above, or simple symmetry.  And I am awed by psychological mirrors, like in this drawing of a cat seeing a lion when it looks at itself.   

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If you enjoy mirrors in poetry, art, art installments, and in architecture-- or admire the use of mirrors in stories, such as,  Snow White, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Hamlet, and the myth of Narcissus--then you may already have an idea for this prompt.  Hamlet's words about acting, is one point of view on all the arts:

. . . hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; 

to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, 

and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Hamlet (Act 2, scene 3)

Today's prompt is Mirror(s), however you like it/them.  You can even write an ekphrastic poem if you include the picture that inspires you.

A few selections for more inspiration:

The Mirror of Venus by Edward Burne-Jones (@1870)

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Same Song by Pat Mora

While my sixteen-year-old son sleeps,
my twelve-year-old daughter
stumbles into the bathroom at six a.m.
plugs in the curling iron
squeezes into faded jeans
curls her hair carefully
strokes Aztec Blue shadow on her eyelids
smoothes frosted Mauve blusher on her cheeks
outlines her mouth in Neon Pink
Peers into the mirror, mirror on the wall
frowns at her face, her eyes, her skin,
not fair.

At night this daughter
stumbles off to bed at nine
eyes half-shut while my son
jogs a mile in the cold dark
then lifts weights in the garage
curls and bench presses
Expanding biceps, triceps, pectorals,
one-handed push-ups, one hundred sit ups
peers into that mirror, mirror and frowns too.

 
The Fitting by Mary Cassatt (19890-91) 

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