OTHER MINDS

The lives we live in other people's minds

shadow our own, are cast by what we do -

and yet are different, too - not ours at all;

the lives we might have lived except we did

not, knowing that we lived them, half aware

at best of the tempestuous affair

that never was, except as happened there

in someone else's mind, half false, half true.

You watch those shadows play against the wall,

the moonlight in between them; restless winds

hurrying through the trees, the moon half-hid;

and wonder at the lives that you have lived

not knowing that you lived them, in her mind,

half false, half true, and not to be believed

because they weren't - except that you were there

behind her eyes, his fingers in her hair.

SG McInerney