Honeymoon
After her funeral, we watched a film
Of their honeymoon. It was, my cousin
Said later, like watching someone’s thoughts.
Perfectly silent. The amateur camerawork
Only made it more beautiful. Abrupt
Cutaways. Long shots that brought to mind
What Hopkins said: “What you look hard at
Seems to look hard at you.” Some clips repeated
So that I watched her walk towards the car twice,
The second time more deeply, like a second,
More ardent kiss. One of those cars
You only see in movies. “My dad’s car,”
My grandfather said. He was sitting
In his wheelchair, watching himself driving
His new wife, who he had just watched be buried,
To Florida sixty-nine years ago. Wasp-waisted,
My grandmother walked towards the camera
Twice and crossed out my vision of her at the end.
Hips that issue more mothers like decrees.
Wombs unfurling from wombs. A flower
Perpetually opening. One of those screensavers
That renews itself seamlessly, or one of Escher’s
Infinite staircases the eye climbs and climbs
But can never reach the top of. Whoever it was
Who was holding the camera couldn’t bear
Her beauty and so glanced away
To the blue of the pool, the light in the palms.
A liquid light that ran like mercury,
Giving the fronds a rinsed, wet look, as if
It had been raining. It hadn’t been raining.
The light thought it had died when the sun sank
Into the sea like a flame drowning itself
Mercifully in its own wax. But there the light was,
Performing its tricks for us as many times
As we chose to ask it to. How could everything
About those days be gone, the very hotel
They stayed in razed, the palms felled by hurricanes,
And yet that light remain? A mystery how
What captivates us is itself captured.
In one frame, she faced him where he stood
At mock attention as if before a queen
To let her muss up his hair. The look on her face so
Contemporary. I remembered certain shocks
I received willingly in a cave in southern France
Upon seeing the almost silly relevancy of a face,
Or the footprint a boy made thousands of years ago,
Fresh as yesterday. We think things were so
Different before we were, as if our birth altered
The world irredeemably. The truth is a woman
Has always messed up (I don’t mean Eve)
A man’s hair, then stepped back and laughed.
There is plenty though that we couldn’t see.
The first night they slept within hearing
Of the sea. The sweet moon rising out of the water.
A swarm of stars surrounding it like bees. The morning
One of them woke up before the other did
And watched them sleep awhile,
Reluctant to shake them awake.
The film we watched was their dream.
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Beautiful poem. I really like this part:
"How could everything
About those days be gone, the very hotel
They stayed in razed, the palms felled by hurricanes,
And yet that light remain?"
Great writing.