Underexposed, still the mid-fifties
flicker clearly enough
through these spliced Christmas cuttings,
this eight-millimeter lantern
of tin,
grinding out years
that had darkened from me slowly
like theatre lights.
The film jumps,
frame runs into frame
juggling characters
like overweight acrobats
nervous on opening night,
but a knob
adjusts the past
and again the early morning
rituals of toys
decorate my childhood.
Pine wreaths, straw beneath
kings camel-backed in ermine,
choirs of German candles,
the tree
a live-wired mosaic
in water,
all these
crowd now to memory
like relatives to a table.
And toasts hands glasses filling the screen,
the lens widening drawn back faces, mirrors
of joy: aunts, uncles, father all are children
reborn of machine-light the shimmering umbilical
unwinding minutes fragile as an uncle’s cigar smoke.
At reel’s end adults’ eyes champagne-sparkling
a final close-up, the screen blinding to sunspots
then whiteness. Yet beheld by me still are scenes
of different tone: telephone calls from
the hospital a child’s surprise at death
long expected, mortality emerging from corridors
wrapped in white tile, tubes, dials never
to be played with. To be touched, only
in reflection, bright absence of real hue color of
time the ever-leaving guest uninvited, but
even then, acquainted with my father, his brothers
and sisters their heart-attacks and cancers.
The empty reel slows on its spindle.
On the lamp unplugged for the projector, tinsel
glinting.
Street light slices through gray curtains.
His firs grow over the house.
As his child, I learned there was a picture
for everything:
ice and rain, permanence and change.
Bethlehem’s romance, then, illuminating all
with its narrative of ornament.
The machine is off; what could not be seen
begins.
My hands folded, watching.
Pine needles darken into the new year.
Originally Posted On Site: 2009-10-20 11:16:42
Last Login: 10.28.09
Video:
Visits as of 12-12-07: 261
Comments:
|
||||||
|
||||||
