It's the fifth grade.
The white-socked guys from the AV squad
have pulled the movie screen down
over the world map
and adjusted the knobs
on the ancient machine.

Miss Goldberg turns out the lights.
There is the shuffle of fifth-grade feet
and the lid creaking closed
on someone's desk.

Then a white flash,
and it's my life from the beginning!

Here I am learning to walk,
and, not much bigger,
I'm by a tent, holding up a fish.
I'm wearing glasses in this one:
posing with a tulip
that got its signals crossed--
half yellow, half purple.

And here I am in the yard,
throwing the ball
to the neurotic dog.
This one's a double exposure:
My hands playing the piano
over someone raking leaves.

Skipping over puberty
(please, no photos of the first gropings),
move on to marriage.
Is this what happens,
all running together now,
faster and faster?

Pictures of my own children,
pulling up in their cribs,
opening Xmas presents
learning to ride a bike,
to swim, to skate,
to answer Whatever and So?

Now it's nothing but art shots,
all black and whites:
some sticks in a river,
a snow-capped mountain,
geese flying in a raggedy V.
What is this Ansel Adams shit?
Have I lost all interest
in human affairs?

Pretty soon it will all be over:
That's me in the nursing home.
Here they are helping me into a wheelchair
and wiping my drool.

I want to stop now,
but the pictures keep coming,
one after another,
each frame separate and distinct,
but somehow still part of the whole,
each one followed by the clear, bell-like tone
that means, Go on.

© 2009 by Hells Bells