A Long Poem - Meditation

My blog entries have been delayed, because I have several decades of thoughts continuing simultaneously.  I can include this long poem that I worked on in 2002.  This long poem refers to movies - Black Orpheus, Auntie Mame, and 2013's Fruitvale Station -  where other film is spliced  in.  It mentions a 2002 mining rescue of nine miners trapped underground for three days, and a radio show host of big band swing.  It also refers to 1965 to 1967 when I worked at the library in high school. 

A Long Poem - Meditation

BLACK ORPHEUS AND AUNTIE MAME

 

The band on the ferryboat kept playing,

spliced into Black Orpheus,

another roll, another camera.

It was the international

geophysical year, the 1950s,

 

Early in the 1950s Auntie Mame

in a taxi, in the taxi back window

is inserted street-scene footage

it is wide, loose pieces.

 

In 1957 my aunt died. 

My aunt was blind.

thirty-one years of sight.

Thirty-four years of dark.

She died of a heart attack in 1957.

 

I could watch Auntie Mame

on a library video player.  As I watched,

during two thousand two nine miners

were trapped underground for three days.

 

Late on Saturday evening,

it shows in the newspaper photo

there was still a little light

in his headlamp.  As they rose,

the radio in the small kitchen

did a television theme song

recognition contest.  I could

never call long distance.

Dr. Kildare.  Steve Allen.  Route 66

from so long ago. 

 

Cynthia Doyan was the radio host.

As it happend - she ended her life on impulse

when her radio station let her go.

 

MEDITATION - 2013 VERSION

 

Fruitvale Station resembles Black Orpheus.

The rapid transit train,

spliced earlier material,  the people

of African descent, the love and violence

in a night of exuberant holiday celebration.

 

I was writing a meditation in 2002

about music in Brazil and a 1960s

Time-Life Series about countries. 

This meditation is a version.

 

The Samba and Carnival are joy

before Lent begins.  Bossa Nova puts

Samba indoors into nightclubs, so joy

confronts the sad, sad blues.

 

IN MY MEDITATION

 

There was the damaged book.  And that

began my thoughts. 

On a chair in the small kitchen

there was the damaged book.

The sky in the window

and the house next door were blue.

Not chrome

like a painting by Hopper,

no.  But through the screen -

like some photographs are blue

in wide, loose pieces.

Like light was on the planet

so water turned like animated jewels.

 

In the small kitchen

there were such waves of weariness.

But along through the air

there wheeled in spirals

Ideas about the photographs

inside the damaged book.

 

I lifted such books one by one

in the warm air near open library windows.

Such a Time-Life book slowed

for a moment.  I felt then

so much desire

To be at the white building

in the Time-Life book called GREECE,

or at the beach near the sea,

that I was there,

and it was not desire at all,

but a miracle.  BRAZIL.

 

Did it pass through my hands

into a bag to the main library?

 

Forty years since BRAZIL

by Elizabeth Bishop and the editors

of Time-Life, it is library re-bound,

a glossy pattern of green,

the narrative columns meet

so that letters are missing at the binding.

But someone with a razor blade

stole a dozen pictures.

The wide, loose pieces

like animated jewels.

 

THE BOOKS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY 

In the small kitchen

there were the waves of weariness.

There was the damaged book.  When I

brought that back I had to report it.

 

When I brought back BRAZIL,

I tested for Library Assistant, then

Looked through books about photography.

 

The animated jewels, the color imbalance.

In one caption it is FOCUS -

the background, the foreground

in a compromise of blur

to avoid a shadow everywhere.

No loss of detail

into the shadow everywhere.

There is a compromise of blur.

Then people, landscape

are as the eye would see it.

 

A COMPROMISE OF BLUR

 

I had tested for library assistant.

Then studied books about photography. 

At the park, dark tree species,

cars with shadows,

the church at the top of the street,

all focused into that

appearance.  A compromise of blur

with some color imbalance.

Mid-July, sun everywhere,

a photograph from the 1950s,

all the park framed ahead -

it was miraculous desire.

 

So much desire

To be that it was not desire at all,

but a miracle.