memorialized by mannequins,
big hatted and seated
ladies wait for their cups,
to be filled by Mrs. Goethals
from a silver teapot of Darjeeling tea
her arm properly covered in long white linen
and arched to pour
all this
set from a photo
a tableau vivant
caught by the lens
of another time
what was real is now frozen
and visitors pass around it like water
Author notes
This scene is displayed at the Panama Canal Museum in Panama's Casca Viejo district. It is a detailed representation of a photograph from the early 1900s of a tea party conducted by the wife of George Washington Goethals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal at the time of its completion.
This poem was published in The Panama News.
Comments
1 - 5 of 5
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This is quite enlightnining. I felt as if i was there...I mean not with the wax figures but at the party.
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this is beautiful.
filled with gorgeous imagery and description, i love it. i especially love the lines :
from a silver teapot of Darjeeling tea
her arm properly covered in long white linen
amazing.
I could read this over and over.
Well done, excellent write.
ElectricBloom
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Frozen in time,...
....with memories fading as the print turns yellow; descriptive imagination creates a scene from the British Raj times. Thanks for entering the contest.
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I love the scene that you have painted here, and what's more important than the scene itself is the fact that you used words so precisely to allow me to actually get the feeling of the scene, to see it in my mind's eye. I've been reading a lot of your work lately and one thing I've noticed is that you have a real talent for imagery and descriptive language that pulls the audience into the place and shows it to them in startling detail. Another great job!
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You are very encouraging. I appreciate your remarks very much.
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