Geof Huth


The Blue-Green Windows of My Eyes

Every window facing me faces forward into sun, the glare and heat oppressive,
the wind stilled, clouds frozen in place. There are no birds in the windows,
there are no faces looking out the windows facing me, there are no voices
behind the windows facing forward, just a wall of windows, into the noon sun.

Before the windows, I see I am a reflection, a body in motion, a floating being
in motion through space and time. My reflected being is eyeless and cannot see me,
reflects but cannot reflect. As it floats through the windows, over windows, from
window to window, it faces me yet doesn’t see. If I call out to it, it yells back

without a sound. My reflection is a specter. It has no eyes, it has no heart,
it breathes no air, but moves under air like a becoming thought. In the cold broad
mirrors, in the windows of the city, it is the only evidence of me, presaging death,
assuming my form. If you come to me at night, the only one you will see is it,

traversing buildings, floating in the quicksilver mirror of the windows of these
skyscrapers that are boring deep up into the night sky. Within the dark, the windows
darken into night, making my reflection brighter and more ghostly. If there is
a full moon, my reflection grows giant and turns a gruesome smiling face out

into blackened night. At midnight, my reflection sleeps within the windows
on schedule. I have noticed it is always the time it is supposed to be, so far as
the reflection of me is concerned. The windows do not open. They remain
closed ensuring my reflection is always visible in their flat faces facing out.

The windows hold back the wind, keep the wind from slipping inside, keep the wind
from blowing cold over the armies of office workers stanchioned against collapse,
keep the wind, keep the wind out. There is no wind within the windows, no wind
without. Without the windows holding the wind, the wind blows hard against

the windows that do not give, that will not allow purchase for the cold, for wind. There is
no sign of wind in the windows, which do not bend, which do not reflect the wind, which
reflect only me, the sky, the clouds within the sky, and the blue-green waters that surround.
There are no birds in the windows. The birds that are not there do not look out at you

from their reflections. They fly before the windows, leaving neither shadow nor reflection.
They perch on the highest steeples of the cathedral and circle the building in a black vortex.
Within the giant rose window of the cathedral, every colored pane is a feather of the birds.
Within the stained-glass pageant of the stations of the cross, each face of Jesus is

a face of a bird, sleek and black, pointed into a beak, without emotion, without pity,
humorless and pure. Each black eye of each black bird swirls in its socket, looking
for escape. When the congregants are employed in their prayers, the birds pull their heads
and their hidden bird bodies out of the windows and fly, unreflecting, past the mirrored

windows of the tall plain buildings of the city, out over the ocean, under cloud, past
pier and bay and port-bound ships. The windows, the flat blank windows, stare
out at the harbor, reflecting the blue-green water of the bay, and, as I stare back deep
into my reflection, I see, staring back at me, the blue-green muscles of my eyes.

 
 
 
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