Screens
Liquid crystal displays, flat device
of pixels, color or monochrome, array
in front of a light or reflector.
Image, dream, meaning—light waves strike
my retina: vivid, the melting together, vivid the data flow,
the beat of it all.
The airport concourse screen predicts
arrivals from Accra and Albuquerque. I imagine
planes hurtling from those named cities.
A glass tube shoots invisible particles
toward the glowing fluorescent surface. I, myself,
a flow of atoms and energy, receive them.
Screens that bring news of the day:
machete–wielding Kenyan mob dance,
Baghdad market, red pools of blood.
Wall Street Journal on my laptop
paints money flows, screens for currencies,
Yen, Euro, Dollar, in bright bar graphs.
GE VividPro echocardiogram screen,
its thin line like a distant mountain range
is my heartbeat.
Above it the mitral valve
opens, closes like a fish mouth.
Opens and closes.
MARTIN DICKINSON is a poet and environmentalist from Washington, D.C. His poems appear in anthologies and journals like Innisfree (www.innisfreepoetry.org) and poeticdiversity (www.poeticdiversity.org). He’s inspired by wilderness and the poetry of Emily Dickinson (no relation) and William Stafford.
