[stylist] Poem - "Close Encounters - Second Draft
Jacobson, Shawn D
Shawn.D.Jacobson at hud.gov
Thu Jul 3 17:31:24 UTC 2014
Bill
I did like that (especially the thirty years later part.
I remember watching the moving (although that scene didn't stand out as much for me).
Shawn
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L Houts via stylist
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 10:18 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: [stylist] Poem - "Close Encounters - Second Draft
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.
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