James rêve à Paris

 

je rêve à Paris

 

Mes nouveau amis, Guy-Amie et Phillipe

ask me, the tourist, to photograph them

handsome young men, with beards, black and blonde

and slender bodies, clothed in tees

 & shorts, twins of masculine beauty

 

They are on an open terrace above me

sitting at a small café table, wine glimmering in sunlight

“Arrête ça” calls Phillipe, raising his right hand

He runs down below to

Reappear with a  flowering tree

In a planter,  taller than a man

It arches over the table

Cascading red blossoms

Obscure each face

 I move to the left, then the right hoping to get them in focus

Zoom button to capture

The camera animates itself

swiveling in my clutching hands

Exploring, pivoting between the two men

Embracing/evading the two, as brothers or lovers

Alarmed, bemused

Taunting, teaching, twisting my mind like the lens

 

Phillipe and Guy are amused at my look

nod & Salute farewell

 saying "a bientot au pique-nique"

the lunch promised in the garden

behind  their apartment

I follow, stumbling  engrossed in the images

Swirling on the camera view screen

 

I am a dog following a scent

my camera's eye

Reverently frames a Renaissance steeple

peeking between thin arched buildings

I snap the shutter

which zooms to capture gnarled

glass coupling of electric wires

 

Turning the a corner

I focus once again

Surprised to walk a familiar path upon

Rue Catherine de La Rochefoucaud

Toward the home art gallery

of mystical Gustave Moreau

the fairy MerryBlueberry blew these words into my ears:

 “Thou were in the soul and hands of he, before thou was thee”

 

I slither quietly,  a  hunters gait

my camera  gun

in Urban Forest

buildings tall and thin (it could be Amsterdam)

before my goal,  a garden fronts a building

out of place, its seems

a darker red, lined with white marble

Inscribed above the 3^rd story of the building:

Connecticut Community Church

at basement level

an arched tunnel entry to the painters gallery

I raise the camera

 

It shifts to the garden foreground

Blocking out my beautiful composition

a white brick oval, fencing a garden of lush green grass

Across it walks a large, fat and very furry

Orange and yellow cat, prowling proudly towards the sewer

“Absurd!” I shout to the camera, loving the image

I turn up a hill, up a street

turning on that alley

where I shall greet my friends

there are  others

Two chubby men, one with a distorted face

Missing teeth, and eating roughly

Both without shirts, red with sunburn and freckles

And I wake, laughing heartily

With Phillipe et Guy-Aime

Still

The cat struts across  my camera lens

As morning sunlight opens the window of day

A continent away

 

Dream of 9/5 somewhere between 5 and 6:30 am

©j.m.frase-white 10/5/2021