On Seeing Psycho in a Concert Hall
       

The orchestra begins to play.
The screen out of certain bravery
hangs high in the hall.

We all know what's going to happen,
because memory is swirling
in this place tonight, reaching back

to when it felt good to tremble,
back to drive-ins, re-runs,
rainy nights, and sleepovers.

And the music, the strings—
you know they're going to climb
higher and higher, until they squeak,

screech, cricket-shrill into your body,
and you hear and see, absorbed
into your past, into the bygone night

of a film that's risen again
from a dead man's mind,
into a steamy shower, into murder,

and blood, and water in the drain.
When it stops, it does not stop.
Even the musicians crane their necks,

believing in the sounds they've made,
turning their eyes up to the screen, to take in,
like us, what they've been accomplices to.

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Copyright © 2014 Anne Harding Woodworth All rights reserved
from Little Patuxent Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission