Almost like a mirror to
Look at you. A sort of Alice on the other side
Of the looking glass.
You are a reflection I never thought might exist.
But there are flaws spiderwebbing cracks into the glass,
The picture so minutely cracked here and
There that it might all just
Fall out of the frame.

Words, picked like highhanging fruit,
Stack and
Form the
Edges of your
Mind--
brilliant walls of Buckingham but also the boxes of fruit
(high hanging like the words) floating down congolese waters
and into the heart

--of Darkness? only kurtz knows
but does it matter? still Grand as ever--

They're words I see in myself on my side
And music from Mechanicsburg Anchorage Dar es Salaam
sings down the same Congo we share

But the only cracks I see are with me.
Your words and wit are the envoys,
Celebrated diplomats from the Heart that lies
downriver.
eyes flash and the Fruit is bountiful and
Hail the heart (wherever whatever it is down the River).

The words are strong as the man who sent them
(somewhere in the Heart)
Such strength to speak and shout
Respect commandeddemanded in the fruit

I often wonder if I have it.
And each time I know I don't
Another crack is born.

the tally man sends his beautiful fruit--
strong as everforever
To the world, smileonface and gleamineye--

and you're him
on the other side
at the Heart.