Mirror Gazing

All of them return
Nargis blooms in disturbed soil
Feeding on echoes

Insight

The title names an intimate but one-sided act: returning not to another person, but to an image of oneself held in another’s words. “All of them” remains deliberately unnamed, allowing people, memories, and a recurring relational pattern to occupy the same silence.

Nargis is a name for Narcissus poeticus. In myth, Narcissus is held by his own reflection, while Echo fades until only her answering voice remains. The poems become the reflecting pool, preserving echoes of attention, affection, longing, and injury. To feed on those echoes is to revisit how one once appeared within another’s gaze.

“Disturbed soil” gives that return consequence. Each recurrence can reopen ground that might otherwise rest, though blooming is neither invitation nor reconciliation. Nargis also returns from Dissolution, where “nargis fields” grew beside amour-propre—self-love shaped by comparison and the need for recognition. The flower has returned to altered soil. The poem observes mirror gazing from the other side of the reflection: the strange asymmetry of being revisited without being rejoined.

Image Credit

Narcisses des poètes face au vent (2014), peupleloup, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.