Dorothy Turner

Reflection
I walk through the streets of myself - Octavio Paz

Passing between high walls
my youth was spent trying
to catch the sun.
In the courtyard of domesticity
a gate clanged shut behind me.
Love delayed and a weight
like stone sank my heart.
Modest, apart, I sighed,
watching others flirt.

In the streets of Seville
I step into a self that I might be
if transmuted through supple haze
and scent of jasmine

Narrow passage of Life in Santa Cruz,
its alleyway of Pepper, the gash of Water.
A square whose stone benches wait
for lovers. Courtyards hidden
behind iron tracery of gates.
In shuttered balconies the sun
is caught in fretted cages,
and at night the moon
flirts over a fan of branches.