The Auteur is vision.
Is director, producer, writer.
Is camera operator, editor, gaffer.
Is everywhere at once.
When animator and I arrive early in the morning,
wisps of smoke rise from the studio floor
and evaporate around us
as we walk to the sound stage.
Are these the remnants of her ghostly crew?
Is she calling the spirits of old Hollywood,
from before the MGM merger,
back when the promise of moving pictures
spurred people onward at breakneck speed
and when everything was a painstaking experiment
done reel by reel, hand by hand?
We just know that we leave,
we return, and more than a night’s work
has been done in our absence.
Meticulous sets built. Lighting rigged perfectly.
Shots edited into the burgeoning story
we’ve sold our souls to tell.
I hate to admit, but one moon in one desert shot
kept alluding me. It never shone realistically,
but one morning, it was perfect. The river below it
was lapping at its shores
as if I had given it life.
I’ll always wonder who took brush to my glass
and set my vision right.
Animator too—
she had made costume after costume for the witch,
but the Auteur denied them all.
Then, one morning on the workbench,
the witch, clothed in the spider-webbed dress
that was as much her character
as her face.
About the Author
