Friday, October 19, 2012

in the desert

Last weekend, I watched one of my favorite
Charlie Chan films, CASTLE IN THE DESERT (1942)
which reminded me of this chapter
from the autobiography I'm working on:

Castle in the Desert

When I lived in New York
I used to go to an old movie theater,
red as a velvet heart inside 
with lamps on the walls.
I watched My Little Chickadee
with W.C. Fields and Mae West,
The Marx Brothers and Charlie Chan
finding the Castle in the Desert.
Homesick in one of the biggest
cities in the world, I knew
I was ready to leave
when it became my routine to go
to The Museum of Natural History.
Somewhere in all those displays
I would find the great wall of glass
holding a captured recreation of
the Pacific Northwest rain forest,
staring into the green light of
birdsongs, cedars and firs
in the middle of skyscrapers.
I used to have a topsecret way of
sneaking into that amazing museum.
(I won't say how in case someone else
is using the same method.)
Also, I realize now how lucky I was
to grow up seeing all those old films
in movie theaters.

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