This Old Projector
It hums in the darkened room,
this old projector—
E.T.’s petrified head
and metal neck, hunched
over a stumpy body, warm
from its white-glowing heart
beaming, radiating
Information
like clear magic dust
scattered across the room,
filling the emptiness
with e=mc2 and vector products,
factors and formulas,
filling overstuffed heads
with ATP and lysozymes,
icons, letters, symbols
Information
about the world
and workings
of this galaxy,
reflected like
sunlight thrown skyward
from a horizontal mirror
and filtered out to students
who, like E.T.,
are strangers here
and long for nothing more
than home.
One of my favorites. The assignment was to pick a normal object in the room and describe it in a unique way. I looked around and saw this old brown overhead projector in the corner of the room. While I looked at it, I suddenly "saw" ET in it, and there was the poem -- it practically wrote itself!
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