Second Glance – Elizabeth Brunowski, PhD

 

The glowering window eyes of the white barn

With the red roof overlook

The deep green John Deere tractor

With its huge black wheels

With yellow insets and a stern bag-faced dummy

 

Seated at the controls.  Walking

Alongside the barn is the mother

With her pudgy son in an orange shirt

Passing the tractor and the flowers on its left.

 

The challenge in the second photograph

Of the same scene is to discover twelve differences

Between that one and the first.  Your eyes

May deceive you. It is a test,

 

It is a game, like the ones you played

In activity books as a child

Having rehearsed the practice daily

As you arrived for breakfast

 

And sleuthed out the sameness

And differences, the pinks

Of the outfits your sister

Wore to high school, the absence

 

One morning of your father, the presence

Or absence of slices of peaches.

Like the farm scene,

The discrepancies

 

Were without explanation.  Here

In the second photo the glaring

Changes announce themselves boldly.

The tractor proclaims Deere John,

 

 

A window’s eye is smudged into a cloud, three

Shadows instead of four, but life-

Tilting details are harder

To pick out: the woman’s arm is no longer

 

Around her son, the tractor wheel

Is without a tread, the flowers are missing,

Like the lost peaches in your cereal

Bowl, and your sister’s customary

 

Smile. Now the window shade is pulled down

So you cannot see the wisteria overtaking

The trellis outside.  Your mother standing

As usual at the stove is wordless.      

 

No one arrives to tour you through the kitchen

Or the farm.  Go whistle your questions. You are left

With your circling mind to make what matches

You ever can, to locate a path and place                              

 

To reclaim those particulars

Of your original scene, the one you seek

To remember the best, the one

You can call your first glance.

 

 

Elizabeth Brunoski is a poet, psychologist, and psychoanalyst.

Her poetry has been published widely in journals. Her latest poetry collection is

The Side Door of the Dream  (International Psychoanalytic Books, 2118).  She has also published psychoanalytic articles on various subjects.  She lives and is in private practice in Manhattan.