Release Hearing

            (for Idris)

When they asked your patient

what he’d like to be,

if he could be anything

in the world,

he answered without hesitation,

            a silhouette.

Of course, no one there

nodded sympathetically,

saying, yes, we all at times

feel that longing

to be the perfect impediment to light,

as precisely limned

as a Victorian portrait on a mantel;

Hitchcock, at the end of the show,

sidling into the profile

of his own body.

Oh, if things were only

black and white,

he could slip into one

of those Rorschach blots,

like a balaclava, pulling it tight

around his head,

so that when he turned sideways,

he’d be as dark and carefully cut

as a lock made

so just the right key

can slide itself in

and open the door.