Movie Night on Bald Mountain

Lost in the Dark

By: c - Aug 20, 2017

Movie Night on Bald Mountain

Sensual summer evening
Sultry under stars
Tanglewood lawn packed
Blankets spread
Yet again John Williams
Conducting iconic scores
With Andris Nelsons
Clips of swashbucklers
Slashing swords
Flashes of bygone times
Movie Night
Later roiled in sleep
Tossing turmoil
Making art
A frequent theme
Struggles so acute
With my father
Ever menacing
Chiding me fiercely
As many do
Intimate encounters
Friends and enemies
Itchy slights to
Scratch and sniff
Glimmering glances
Magnified by restless sleep
Looming ever larger
Epic works mocked
My best efforts
Wrecked by morning’s light
What might have been
Poof by dawn
Torn up hopes
Tussled sheets
Tsunami dreams
Morning coffee
Catching up on news
On line the latest threats
Unfolding disasters
The human comedy
Not terribly funny
Dick Gregory died
Remembering him
Back stage chat
Before his fade to black
Escape hatch of
Bursting fantasies
Flares in the air
Curious memories
Thinking back to
Early days of TV
Walking to movies
Saturday afternoons
Along Beacon Street
To Cleveland Circle
Closer to home
Coolidge Corner further away
Or a long trek to Brighton
Now and then for matinees
Near St. Elizabeth’s Hospital
Tomb like Egyptian
Decades before basement
Dark and dusty MFA
Surrounded by mummies
Venerable colleagues
Silent friends
Grateful Dead
There I saw exotic
King Solomon’s Mines
Most exciting movie ever
Such a thrill to see
Debonair Stewart Granger
Most handsome man alive
How I loved movie stars
Most of the pretty boys
Not very good actors
That hardly mattered
No such thing as bad
More sponge than critic
Soaking up adventures
Thrill of being there
Alone in the dark
Escapes from dad
With better things
For me to do
My very own world
Not about cinema
That pretentious word
Or Parisian Film Noir
Cahiers du Cinéma term
For black and white
So friggin’ pretentious
Cagney and Bogart
Edgar G. Robinson as
Little Caesar
Thugs and gangsters
Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly
Before Bonnie and Clyde
Say hello to my little friend
When color was rare
Era of grisaille
Then Cinerama
Curtains parting
Widening the screen
Seemingly making
Movies bigger and better
Caught up by epics
Occasional trip downtown
By rattler across the tracks
To Washington Street
Its glare of marquees
Crying out to me
Vortex of films
Swirling within
Home for dinner
Never revealing
Where I had been
The library of course
Or what was seen
That was private
Not to be shared
Until this day
Secret life far from
Ambitions of dad
His son another doctor
Was not to be
Movies set me free
Life lost in the dark
Try a little tenderness