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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