Monday, July 30, 2007

On the Death of Ingmar Bergman

Softly & somewhere surprising the smell of the sea

flits upon us. Or is it just the rain, the tiny prayer

of bones the bats left to the corners near the burned

remains of a balsawood airplane I sacrificed to

the memory of decay which is the smell of the sea.


Encased in trembling branches, quelled to pride

by evolutionary forces, Jackdaw & maple play

dress up, pretend to whittle teeth from left over

thistles while a workman scatters bright brown

mulch across the incalculable memory of the sea.


On a route I travel from my childhood, I am at

the far edge of field of asphalt smashing vacuum

tubes from the ornate guts of a television set.

Like shrimp in the ocean, they keep coming,

materializing to my hands their alien encasings

then just as quickly turning into grenades I heave

to near distances to see them explode, juicy

fruits of exploding glass, tangy wires tangling,

spitting out two bottom nodes like bat’s teeth.


If I were left alone any more as a child I wouldn’t

now be able to see the vacuous tendencies

of rolling water. They say when a tidal wave comes

that the sea draws a breath so big the sand

is exposed for miles. In that combination of the sun

on sand is an articulation of clams pulling in

so hard to their shells they explode, before

the crash is a tinkling as if light could make

a sound, as if everything weren’t about to be lost.

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