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At the Imax

watching one of those 3D movies

surrounding and overwhelming

lions jumping out, lost cities,

dark knights, underwater grottoes,

planetviews from space; when intruding

 

a smell of buttered popcorn triggers other

memories: buttered toast, Seville marmalade

taste bud wings transporting me to size six

where outside it’s snowing in overcoat land

while here coals glow in a grate reddened

by poker and tongs

 

a cardboard box is open on the carpet

its stack of double sepia cards, glossy

left-right almost identical twins exposed,

on closer look tiny differences appear

almost imperceptible between tea stains and

cigarette burns, but most of all I remember

the wondrous contraption of wood, brass

and glass, with clips you fitted them into

 

then clasping the whole thing close

to eyes and nose, sliding them along a track

when inner worlds appear jumping out and

I’m inside the scenes again: a man on

a camel besides a sphinx, cliffs next to

a stormy sea, birds on a telegraph

wire, a steaming locomotive, dinosaur skeletons,

the camel man again, wait—

 

isn’t that father, all khakied up, his

mustaches bristling as if by some internal

switch that Imax never invented, here he

is again at breakfast table cracking open

his boiled egg while mother, bright eyed,

brings in mounds of buttered toast, hot

chocolate, all so clear and three dimensional

 

in the darkness here in Imax, I can smell

her face cream as she kisses my cheek and

as I look around just one momentary blink

for a tissue, I find a box of popcorn on my

lap and blazing stereophonic music all around

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© Johnmichael Simon

2014

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