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.
CarolHawks