Failure of Imagination

each morning i imagine myself again,
rising one more time earlier than i would wish,
light still gray on gray, deeper tones of black
clinging to the sides and the corners of the room,
rauccous birdsong irradiating pre-dawn trees,
the sky, the windows of this house, and i turn
to the mirror to see if it has worked, if my face
looks back, the skin around my eyes still aging,
the eye color fading, washing out,
or if there has been
a significant failure, if today the glass is blank,
my eyes staring at the nothing of the mirror's surface
from the nothing that is their own, wondering
how it will feel, raucous songs sweeping over the sill
and meeting no resistance, light rising through another
dawn to this room where no one rises, illuminating
empty space, and then imagination fails at last,
with ear, with eye, with body.

Phebe Davidson