Saturday 26 September 2015

Hommage à Bergman

This weeks homework for our Creative Writing Group was to write 300 words beginning “Yesterday Ingrid came back into my life”. Here is what I wrote.

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Ingrid came back into my life yesterday
as she frequently does.
Entering stage right
hers is the intermezzo that holds it all together.
I’m spellbound …..
the famous lines, that look,
belying innocence,
oozing sexuality.
A face that always looked good in hats.

She’d be 100 now and still gets me every time
“Play it for me” misquoted yes,
but yes, oh yes I’d play it for her, for her ….
tender curls rolling down her flawless cheeks,
caressing her angular face,
outlining her cupid lips.
No size zero
but the perfect frame for 40s fashions.

Decked out in virginal white more often than not
Purity embodied as in her Joan of Arc.
The onscreen porcelain doll illusion
broken well and true
for Rossellini’s love .
To leave her man, her child
“an influence for evil” said senators
but still we watch, as they do now I’m sure
bedazzled, enthralled,
hooked line and ….
sink into her deep brown eyes
her eyebrows, full, unplucked -
rampant by today’s trends -
they made her Meir more authentic.

I imagine it’s me
in Humphrey Bogart’s arms,
with Gregory Peck, with Yul Brunner.
Torn between Rick and Lazlo;
saved by Robert Jordan.
personas dramaticus
her life, my life, separated by the flimsiest of veils
Yes Ingrid came back into my life yesterday
as she frequently does.

Words 234

© Sheila Ash 26th September 2015

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