The
Dress
1.
1949
She stands, one slim-fingered hand on hip, the other
reaching inside the open rear window of a hump-backed car, the kind you see
only in old pictures of your parents; her right hand on her hip, cocked at a
flirtatious angle, posing to please unseen photographer; smiling, preening,
teasing. The man, we assume it is a man, crouches low to improve the line of
sight, captures classic Athenian bone structure— Grecian nose, head held high,
hair back raven black against milky sky.
My mother (I wish I knew her then!) proud, poised in
new blue dress accenting slenderness of waist, hips that mold to delicate
splayed fingers; hips that have probably been caressed a thousand times by the
man who now caresses her entirety of face, hair, body, eyes, catching her soul
in his lens, the way primitive people’s souls are caught and held and sometimes
enslaved by the camera’s unforgiving eye.
And let me tell you about that dress! It fits her
like the skin of a newborn colt, like the feathers of a hummingbird in flight,
like smooth bark of a eucalyptus tree before molting; she and dress melding as
one, the thicket of hair a mystery framing a face that exists as an extension
of that magnificent dress.
No one else could ever wear such a dress.
A dress of that blue they call navy; a field of
flowers in yellow and white (I imagine - the picture is in black and white)
splashed across the night of her supple body; navy as the Navy blues my father
wears to sweep her off her dainty feet into this car, this life, this picture;
Providence Rhode Island 1949, picture I sweep into the album with all the
others taken from that time until the end of childhood.
from
her bower of scented pine
the
blue bird chants the wonder
of
first newly cracked egg
2.
1971
This is the day I follow a woman, compelled,
stalking her along a Manhattan street, my camera angled downward, synchronizing
my steps to hers, snapping as I go, her bag slapping at her side, Capezio
shopping bag adorned with Modigliani face familiar as the face of the woman by
the car —dark hair swept back, eyes older, unsmiling, lips pursed like a woman
who knows more than she bargained for – thwacking at the women’s thigh, against
the dress she wears, Navy blue, sprinkled with yellow and white flowers, vintage
rayon dress circa 1949 (I imagine) smart once more New York City 1971.
I do not know this yet; how can I? I am a visitor
here, with my borrowed camera brought with me to steal the souls of strangers,
as they call to me that way only strangers can. All I know is propulsion
forward, that face now stylized on a plastic bag, holding dancing slippers, a
tiger patterned leotard, or maybe only her lunch. I am drawn by the face on the
bag and not the woman carrying the bag. If I look up at her; if I see the cant
of her head, her hair might be blonde; she might be impossibly tall or fat;
something tells me not to look, and my camera carries itself and me back to the
face moving ahead and down and then finally out of range of my prying lens.
And that dress, fabric slick and worn and loved and
smooth and loose and swaying about the knees, dazzling in sunlight, capturing
me as I capture it; sealed away inside my mysterious black box and saved like a
treasure, like a bird’s nest fallen from an apple tree in the last strong wind
of winter. Like a talisman I do not know the meaning of
posing,
I throw back my head
to
reflection, miming laughter,
still
unable to crack open and soar
3.
2015
Today, unpacking the past, digging through layers of
unremembered memorabilia, I find, then frame, the two photos, forgotten until
this move, hopefully the last. Placing them side by side, I stand stunned
before twins; faces long, one laughing, the other not, one alive, the other
cartoonish, a caricature of the first; but the dress! It arrests my brain,
overwhelms the prints, collapses the years between, flower for flower, swirl
for swirl, fabric for fabric. This dress, oh, yes, maybe mass manufactured in rayon
after silk went extinct during the war, and fabric was scarce and saved, and
passed down, and dresses went to thrift stores for fashion-retro minded 70’s
chic chicks until today it reaches its final destination, in black and white on
my wall, chemically preserved the way a corpse is drained of all color and
saved for later reincarnation and remembrance.
in
the park buzzards
one
two three take flight and wheel
into
thin air
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