How to Look in the Mirror

Imagine you're
red-carpet ready, in high
glamour, ready
to swirl and swagger. Cheers
for your name, while cameras
flash. Your theme music swells,
and it's go, baby, go!

Imagine your best day,
a joy-love-blessing day,
clear-sky sun (dae)
of automatic smiles.

Sing yourself a lovesong:
praise for your eyes,
a hymn to your hair,
a sonnet for shoulders,
encomium for curves,
for honeyed hips, for sultry
lucious you. Divine
beautiful you. Now

open your eyes.

I wanted to write about something that we do every day, something that we do automatically without thinking. Something that we, nevertheless, manage to do wrong. What's more basic than looking in the mirror? And yet, we screw it up: sending ourselves negative messages, nitpicking the aspects of ourselves we dislike instead of loving our best qualities. I dictated this into my Sony digital tape recorder while walking the dog on a bright, sunny late afternoon. The spirit of this poem owes a lot to Carson Kressley's show "How to Look Good Naked."