Saturday’s Poem: After A Movie

Marquee

AFTER A MOVIE by Henry Taylor

The last small credits fade

as house lights rise. Dazed in that radiant instant

of transition, you dwindle through the lobby

and out to curbside, pulling on a glove

with the decisive competence

of the scarred detective

or his quarry. Scanning

the rainlit street for taxicabs, you visualize,

without looking, your image in the window

of the jeweler's shop, where white hands hover

above the string of luminous pearls

on a faceless velvet bust.

Someone across the street

enters a bar, leaving behind a charged vacancy

in which you cut to the dim booth inside,

where you are seated, glancing at the door.

You lift an eyebrow, recognizing

the unnamed colleague

who will conspire with you

against whatever the volatile script provides…

A cab pulls up. You stoop into the dark

and settle toward a version of yourself.

Your profile cruises past the city

on a home-drifting stream

through whose surface, sometimes,

you glimpse the life between the streambed and the ripples,

as, when your gestures are your own again,

your fingers lift a cup beyond whose rim

a room bursts into clarity

and light falls on all things.