SUBJECT>A Man and a Woman POSTER>Secular EMAIL> DATE>1107675338 IP_ADDRESS>adsl-66-136-119-159.dsl.elpstx.swbell.net PASSWORD>aakgayyCUljHQ PREVIOUS> NEXT> 83116 83124 83141 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

A candle-light licks the dark
I contemplate its flicker, watching
"Red" by the late Kszysztof Kiesliewski

Some imagery and events trace
my memoirs with the stories spiraling
into a renewed existence

The window veils dance
between the room and the outside
like my awareness of now moves
between the future and the past

M. will come to eat dinner with me
to compare the lengths of our fingers
align our naked limbs while Buena Vista
Social Club pours mellifluous Cuban rhythms
and her lips taste honey

circa 1975 when I saw last time
Jean-Louis Trintignant in "A Man and a Woman"
with that da.. da.. da.. dada dada daaaaah... melody
his face is still young but he walks with a cane
maybe demanded by the role in the movie

Chopin has technical difficulties on the CD player
it starts to spin and stops. And then
that story about the ferry, close to 1,500 dead

W. told me about his aunt, married to a Swed,
she did not make it. He was devastated
across the Baltic sea. She was returning
from her native Poland. The water in that sea
is so cold, even in summer

After traveling all night, on a hard truck bed
next day morning, still sleepy, almost fainting
from tiredness, I jumped head-first into the Baltic
my skull felt imploding from the cold
once submerged, a regret kicked on in a
nano-second's rush of hypothermia.
Have they recovered her body?

When observed from afar, from atop of a hill
the rain looks like Aureole Borealis, skewed
by the wind, a smudge
on a pastel landscape.