“Reflect” (self-portrait) Cibachrome print from 35 mm slide. ©1993, Jenny Eng.
"Heavy Seeks Light" poem by Jenny Eng, ©2004 Jenny Eng. All rights reserved.

cold here
sitting alone
silence reinforcing
an unshakeable sense of solitude

acoustics in a conflicted soul
random sounds
echoing its emptiness

listen:
the dryer rumbles...
reverberates through the floorboards—
uninsulated hardwood,
beautiful, but flawed from the start
warped over time
by a rotated foundation.

the laundry spins,
hot air blows...
i imagine lint and hairs dancing
just before getting trapped in the sieve
fire hazard: clean before each use

when my mind is heavy,
the house is pristine.
today someone else
swept and mopped
but i
     am no lighter for it

listen:
an intermission from the rain
a windswept pebble
breaks the placid surface
on a stagnant pool of water
the stillness
ripples through my life
like rifle fire

upon reflection
i see now
concentric circles
formed around childhood's pebbles
invisible to all but me

grabbing at echoes
makes bigger waves
obscuring the origin
feeling blindly along the bottom
tamps the stones in deeper
burying the source

deeper into the soft soil
of the heavy mind
the clever mind
the never mind

odd,
the things you see
when you listen