Salinger

This is a golden shovel poem inspired by J.D. Salinger’s Haiku from Seymour—An Introduction:

The little girl on the plane

Who turned her doll’s head around

To look at me.

Salinger:

Time sways. Senses mute. Without realising the

Line blurs. Between self and other. A little.

Now I’m the girl.

The life she fell on 

Now mine. Once she. Now me. The

different plane.

More than ‘The Girl Who’.

More than faces turned.

Her.

Life unlike a Doll’s.

I’m inside her head

Feeling my way around.

Oh! What a privilege to

Be invited to look

Through a window. And not in a mirror back at

Me.