Self Portrait at the Year’s Turning

The morning light slips through the louvered slats.
You tug your mind from bed and start the day
with washing, toast and coffee, then switch on
much later with the radio, as though your life
were taking place elsewhere – the commonplace
desire to see yourself as someone else;
the bright, imagined self behind your dreams;
the other you, the one that rests inside
the gap between which one of you is true
and which a possibility – for when
it comes to being, don’t we all do it
with some success, as we begin to learn
ourselves, balancing with grace like acrobats
turned out in the disguise each year creates.