[stylist] Poem - "Close Encounters - Second Draft

[William L Houts]

Hello Again, Listers,

I wrote the following poem a couple of days ago.  This one required a 
lot of beating into shape, despite the fact that I've been meaning to 
write it for more than thirty years.  It's about the Spielberg movie, 
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.  The poem is concerned with the 
scene in which the child struggles to free himself from safety and his 
mother's grasp, while she  in turn battles to keep him from the aliens's 
grasp.  That scene is so powerful to me;  the way both characters are 
acting under undeniable imperatives and both are entirely correct:  
Barry must go with his new friends while his mother, Jillian, must keep 
her child safe.  It used to make me cry.

Anyway.  Poem follows below my signature.


--Bill


---

/Here's that movie's /crucible heart:

Not that saint craft singing

which comes at the end, bringing its captured

crewmen to earth once again,

thirty years after their away taken hence,

but coming home staggered and wise.

I mean that terrible gorgeous scene

in the embattled countryside home

where the starfolk lay their light-siege,

sending scorching love through the windows

and vents: O remember that five note song,

that call from the small black-eyed

seraphs, so trumpet bright and fierce,

setting mother and child at odds,

his toys themselves climbing to life, crying

come,O come, you brother, you son

while mother must not, must not lose her Barry

to stark ferocious angels,

who brook no mere mother's rage, their sage enchantment

voiced five tone bright, their scorching light

surging through windows and grills as Barry

is birthed through the dog door, earth to mystery air,

loosed from mother and awakened toys

to sky home, a child's top flying.

Years later his wife will hear of singing blue spheres,

and of rooms where time itself slept,

dreadful, like a great sated lion.