Deconstructing Mark

I heard Irish pipes a’playin’
Lilting some distant where behind me
A little Pan Pipe trill
A simple melody
That flipped the switch
On some Imagination Projector
Running reels of 16mm
Celluloid Reality
Clickity-clackity
Off the reel
Behind the lens
Through the gears whose tiny, voracious teeth
Move the fantasy forward
At 24 frames per second
Panning over rolling, verdant hillsides
Overlooking a choppy sea
Which could be Ancestral Éire
Or just as well San Luis Obispo
California—where I’ve actually been—
Which I’ve actually seen
Or is it—more probably—
An admixture
Of both those places
And a thousand others
Encountered in life
Or in pictures or books
Or TV or movies
Or rich, half-remembered descriptions
I maybe misheard once
Some unconscious collage
Wafting like mescal visions
Whenever Pavlov rings his bell,
And Celtic music does it,
For future reference.

The last 30 lines of verse
Exist beyond words and
Consumed under a second
As I turned around
And went to find
The source of the tune
That dragged me into the living room
Where the TV was off.
The computer showed its desktop.
The pipers melted into
Other dimensions than I inhabit:
Translucent notes drifting off their staff
Rolling green hills in the background
A fleck, then another, then a streak
Across the foreground
A dark contrail like scratch
Across the screen—
The scene—
And flippity-floppity
Flaps its ragged end through the lens,
Leaving me looking
Into white light,
Wondering at Irish piping.