Howard Altmann is an American playwright and poet.
APERTURES
Howard Altmann
Old and blind and in love
with light, he’d reach for
the hands of writers to guide
him back to the landscape,
once the subject of his photo-
graphs. Often he’d see just
how hard it was to render it
right, and would feel free
of such burdens. A last cloud
on a lake he’d let carry him
into night. Breaking sounds
of autumn he’d leave a pond
to compose, rustling the stream
of images. The panicked flight
of the hunted he’d let the dry
grasses capture, their golden
yield his release. Even in
the crimson cusp of an evening
he’d wedge himself, curling
into a ball without twilight
ever sinking him. The man
swam with the fog and its
very touch of resolve. Further
than any writer his shadows
lapped up the sand. All this
in the ebb and flow of a ninth
decade by the tide, an inlet
mapped by its egress to the sky.
And when moonlight would
come to wash his window,
a heavy tome floating lost
worlds on his lap, often
his other hand would read
the apertures of old cameras,
an author’s intent the subject
of his alignments. But when
the milky skies would dip
the hand of a writer in
the milky seas, to the light-
house he’d ascend, dreaming
of being a writer who was
blind, tracing a horizon.
===
THE READER
Howard Altman
The book sat on the table
for years
before it opened to a page
exposed to light
for the first time.
In their new surroundings
the words trembled
shaking all meaning
from their assembly,
the reader unable to enter.
Then the ink began to run
past the margins
to the mahogany to the floor,
random drops collecting themselves,
expanding from within.
The reader saw fit to stand
by the window,
following a cloud
till it stalled in front of the sun,
sweeping its passage along eyes closed.
As the sky proceeded
to draw the ink from the floor,
affixing the once-quivering words
to the slow-moving cloud,
the reader read the page in the dark.
And when the day’s shadows turned in
for the night
the book closed as it had opened
without a hand,
the reader calling it a day
of prayer.