G-NT3806KSJP
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Consequential and In-: Notes for a Film




A beach
There is little action
A man walks slowly, head down, bending now and again
A woman walks slowly, shoulders curved like a shell, stooping in ter mit tent ly

Smooth white dunes look pubic
barely sprigged with grass
a girl’s first hair

THEN SHOTS OF
sand grains, enlarged a la Teshigahara   small piece of ashen, worm-
       tunneled wood       claws of the blue crab, enameled blue, red, yellow
  large piece of bamboo 4½ inches in diameter, with barnacles   dead
   sharks’ silvery carcasses                 mahogany from West Indian packing crates
tasseled pieces of hawser             55 gallon drum, twisted, rusted, brittle
           one large black swim fin, torn                 glass bottles of various shapes
and colors, prominently a blue Phillips Milk of Magnesia with rusty cap
                       plastic bags, convoluted heaps anchored by sand
long light of afternoon protracts the shadows of platic bottles and jugs for
       Chlorox or Fantastik but all now without labels

Salt spray clouds lens for soft-focus of
smooth white curved naked
bottle
silhouetted against the surf

Sand streams inland toward the low sun like swift water, swirls
around the ankles of the man and woman, who
are always seen
at the edges
of the screen
                       never centered

Wind
dominates the soundtrack
as in a Fellini film
Any words spoken
are against the wind




Sandra Lynn (1944—2013) was born in Longview, Texas, studied at the University of Texas, and received her masters in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She published one full-length collection of poetry: I Must Hold These Strangers (Prickly Pear Press, 1980), from which these poems were excerpted, and contributed poems to the travel photography book Where Rainbows Wait for Rain: The Big Bend Country (Tangram Press, 1989). She moved to New Mexico in 1988, and was a Professor of English for fifteen years, first at University of New Mexico, and later at New Mexico State University: Carlsbad. Her last book, Windows on the Past: Historic Lodgings of New Mexico, is a history and travel guide to New Mexico's historic hotels (University of New Mexico Press, 1999). Prickly Pear Press also included her work in the anthologies Washing the Cow’s Skull (1981) and Three Texas Poets (1986).