reflecting

One swallow skims the surface gobbling flies,
and his reflection rises to the bait.
His likeness and his image, hue and size;
Narcissus and his true-love strain to mate.
Another world, the twin to this, our own,
just one of many painted by Monet.
What strange Intelligence might call it "home"
Is more than 4-D mortal man can say.
Two worlds encounter at the mirror-plane
Or so 'twould seem, exchanging left for right
it took a Snell to lucidly explain
the symmetry of such reflected light.
String theorists insist on seven more
dimensions, but can't make clear what they're for.

solipsist

Two swallows loop and swoop and bill and bond,
as if between the twain, they shared one mind.
A pas de deux split by the glassy pond;
this pair are  closest kin, and more than kind.
A mirror cosmos, swapping left for right,
accessible at water's interface.
Insensible to scent, but plain to sight
might fill--like ours--infinity of space.
Each swoop, the partner's there to keep the date,
no straying eye could tease the pair apart.
Narcissus and his true-love strain to mate;
four wings in sync beat to a single heart.
To love the Other like one's self seems right,
but this one's just a trick of bending light.

Ea

what's known's a glowing island in the night
around it, unillumined, laps the sea
enticing us to build a bridge of light
establishing what is, from fantasy
that second galaxy was huge to find
horizons fled away ten billion-fold
Ed Hubble blew the world's collective mind
our Earth's the same; what's bigger is the Cold
a gleaming pebble on the shore of Time
proud edifice of centuries of thought
the product of our faculty sublime
within the greater Whole is scarcely aught
the intellect gropes out in Time and Space
compulsively, like puppies love the chase