Lanternslides

When Snow White enters the forest there are dangers
 more complex than poisoned apples: shadows
 draw around her, and trees, suddenly incarnate,
 paw with branches like arthritic fingers.
 Her arms held out for balance, she describes
 frenetic gestures of panic, treads
 the rising waters of blindness; distended eyes
 pan for the moon's curved wink of silver.
 This scene frightened my mother as a child,
 despite the straight beam stabbing overhead
 alive with dust, and in those fifties, smoke.

A few years later my mother gave
 three more innocents to the world: pulled forth
 from darkness like hooked fish, to gulp cold air
 and wail against a sudden brilliance. Now
 we are accustomed to surprises, to invasions
 of light, the prying and obnoxious beam
 an usher sweeps to sunder anxious couplings.
 Our lives are marked by farings into darkness,
 by ventures into uncertain twilights. Be it
 womb or cave, the cinema proffers both
 the light's solace and the dark's discomfort.