JUDY GARLAND, BOB HOPE AND OVER THE RAINBOW
The tin canister from an attic to a garage sell had no label, no title. “Five dollars,” he said,
adding, “you take
your chances, five.” That night I placed the film through the movie projector, 1950ish
model. I turned on the thin
gray light toward the screen in the shadowy dark haunting. And, ever lasting lives came back as ifthey really had
never departed.
It was Bob, in dialogue with a young Garland, but grown up. With passion she sung
the lovely song, the
song that out lived her. Then she rushed off stage. The way they commonly would in those
days of WW2. And the old film ran out.
The slapping flapping noise it made I didn’t want. Years later I sold it in a garage sell. “Five dollars,” I said, while
adding-
STANLEY M. NOAH has been published in the following: Wisconsin Review, Nexus, Main Street Rag, South Carolina Review, Poetry Nottingham and other publications in the U.S.A., Britain, Canada and New Zealand. He won The Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest in 2006 and was Full of Crow’s Featured Poet for September, 2009.