FULL MOON / Alison Pick

A portal. A circular door –
to eternity, maybe, where existence goes
to die, to be reborn again. A hole to crawl through
leaving failure behind. Call the place we land in
heaven, although it’s dark: the moon does not shine
without the sun. The two-faced sky
sees both sides, its single eye
trained on absence: words not said,
the back of a mirror. The stars’ mirror image
held on the sea. We paddle through
our own reflections, full moon above, that watery
gate. The shape of you, the shape
of me. The infinite distance to be crossed.

Why do I like this poem?

It's because of this:

" The two-faced sky
sees both sides, its single eye
trained on absence: words not said,
the back of a mirror."

It's the negative film, which we tend to diregard, forget, ignore, because the positive picture is always so much sharper, fuller, congruent with what is easily identified and known. Absence, silence. lacunae, non-reflective surface - what are they to us? Can emptiness have meaning? Can we ever know words that remain unspoken? Yet, meaning is created in the gap between words, within the very silence that separates them from one another.