Image Marriages

The beautiful peephole lets us see the way The others live, and they live lavishly, Blowing their soft-won millions on a spree. If we could be them, only for a day! The beautiful peephole shows us the high style, Champagne and velvet, the stretch limousine, The latest sprinklings in the new cuisine - Not ours, not even for a little while. The beautiful peephole lets us see into The dressing rooms of stars, and lets us see The star herself undressing carelessly Until a mechanism shuts the view, but not before we've taken in the scope Of all we ’ ll never have, the thrills, the laughs, Savannahs full of emus and giraffes, And swallowed a little poison pill of hope Whose toxins start to glaze the inner eye Through which we see our ordinary lives, The same old jobs and problems, husbands and wives, With shimmers of the possibility It could be altogether otherwise. And that slight sparkle changes how we feel About ourselves and all we know is real. We close o

All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all. But, sure, the sky is big, I said; Miles and miles above my head; So here upon my back I'll lie And look my fill into the sky. And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall. The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And—sure enough!—I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch