The Death of Cinema

Some day the warblers will come and the birders 
will wander through the undergrowth, 
run across the ticket booth covered in briars,
the rusty saplings of the speaker posts.

Somewhere in the thickets they will find 
the popcorn stand, where they once 
bought a two buck bucket big enough 
to last a double feature of Godzilla/Mothra.

They can still sing the shobijin  chant,
remember Godzilla’s atomic breath
become a mushroom cloud in the 
projector winds— leaving fall out 
on the  kids munching fried chicken
on the brown roof of a Rambler.  

They can recall all the ‘Vettes, GTO’s,
GTX’s, Road Runners, Torinos, Firebirds
exposed in the projection field, all the 
bouncing of metal up and down, the 
sweet wrestlings of this breeding ground,
born from a passion thin as film.

There is a whistle and a yellow throat 
springs to a branch beyond the Kudzu.
Their aged hands grope for the camera,
fumble for the correct f-stop.   There 
is a click, a yellow flash just as the branch
sways, bounces up beyond the frame,
leaving them with nothing but the memory 
of flight, a mourning for the lost picture,
the vanishing flame, the death of cinema.