Poetic Silents

In the living room, under the table, sits a book saved from childhood. Its jacket gone, its cover slightly bent, the binding with faded gold lettering weak from age. Open it. Inside, hundreds, thousands of stills and portraits, three decades’ worth, black and white and staring out frozen or posing dramatically, with little explanation other than a name. Silent, like the films they show.

Open it.

In another era’s theater, the lights dim. From everywhere comes a crash of pipes and whistles, and a bright light appears at the foot of the stage. The organ rises, where it belongs, with an older man playing by inspiration and tradition. The audience is enthralled and applauding; the movie hasn’t yet begun.

The fairy tale film pretending but doing it well preaches of love and acceptance. Modern melodrama done up like old, accompanied by the strings and winds of an orchestra.

In the classroom, a boy among others hears the projector cough and whir, and soon a flicker appears of a mountain, people in single file winding up the pass like ants. One falls and remains still. Later, when the little man makes the rolls dance a gig, the boy can’t help but laugh.

Open it.

The groom by duty strides down the middle of the road, leading to the only woman he wants. Behind him unknowingly a horde of brides, wanting anything but love, pursues and gathers speed. Soon, he sees, and he is running like a madman. He becomes a blur.

The dashing buccaneer laughs in triumph from the main mast, betrayed pirates swirling in frustration below. All in ancient color.

The wife cowers in the corner of the tram, looking away. The husband, horrified at what he did and what he may lose, stands over her, his eyes never leaving. They remain still, but the tram slips from woods to town to city.

The woman lies prone on the ice flow, senseless from misery. Her baby dead, her reputation gone, her new family betrayed, everything lost, she has given herself to the storm. The river rushes heedless toward the falls, while forgiveness jumps from ice block to ice block after her.

Three women, never trusting, drift like fragments of ghosts in the desert, stumbling from the body of the man who loved all. One plots to destroy, another hates. The third knows, and struggles against hopelessness.

He is innocent, and the girl knows now. She is there, in the projection room, after he awoke from a dream. He does not know what to do, so he looks to the screen for inspiration.

Open it.

The girl kisses him; he never smiles, but the joy is in every movement. The couple rediscovers their love in the vows of another, and he cries to her for forgiveness. The lost baby brings out the women’s better natures. The tramp thinks her note is for him. The disgraced doorman is on his knees in the washroom. The daredevil man hangs periously from the clock.

Open it.

Still images made fluid, wildly fluid. Not fiction but memory, burned forever. Tinted or monochrome, scratched and worn, but still moving, dancing, laughing, crying, living. Living. Living.