Our holy Sunday ritual was to drive
West on the main road of our town,
the only one that cut clean through
so we could bleed out like mercury from
a broken thermometer
to a movie theater between Lockport
and East Amherst.
Across its large screens, images of life in Technicolor,
a promise that some “other” world might exist simultaneously
with ours (a study in black and white–denial of the grey)
More potent than churches with polished wooden pews
anchoring our small town to Earth,
the screens, taut and silent standing like masts,
carried us to freedom.
Our heads bowed, like the pious, but rather as seedlings underground
feeling our way towards the unseen yet promised land.
Our hymn, the humming of the car’s engine as we’d head West,
like pilgrims trying to project ourselves out of fractured film.
The sun enfolding in the open Sky like burning manuscripts,
a prayer delivered to the invisible Infinite.
great poem! wonderfully written
I believe i remember that path.
red car..theatre..waterworld.