I SEE SEENA OWEN
IN "INTOLERANCE"

lips & lashes
ubiquitous pearls

Owen enters
film history
bringing blossoms
to cheek

it's Griffith's
Babylonian set
a century before
its whisper
at Hollywood & Highland

she swirls
reaches across time
to teens
who don't know
her name

in the movie
Princess Beloved
plunges a dagger
into her chest

in life the words
she spoke fell flat
so she wrote
instead

when I climb
those stairs
under Babylon's elephants
I still see
Seena Owen
& when her hand
searches
it finds mine



(earlier this year Bill Berger took this picture of George Pavik & I under the elephants at Hollywood & Highland)