Book of Dolls 15 by Bruce Bond

I take myself as a child to the movies, 
and when I fall for the illusion, as rain 
that falls into the streets on screen, I 
forget.  After all, the score is huge, 
and the blacktop sizzles like a house 
on fire.  A boy is running in the alley
from a danger no one there believes. 
No one, that is, but us.  And just then 
my childhood says, I am leaving you.  
And I know the clouds will let up soon.
The music will subside.  But as I walk
home, alone, I keep replaying that scene,
stepping into rain that fell when I was 
elsewhere, falling, where I am falling still.

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Bruce Bond is the author of 35 books including, most recently,Patmos (Juniper Prize, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, 2022), Choreomania (MadHat, 2023), Invention of the Wilderness( LSU, 2023), and Vault (Richard Snyder Award, 2023).

19 August 2024