The Beautiful Peephole

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 our hearts up, and we feast our eyes.

Joseph Harrison

Reflections on a calm day, Badhri