JawsFest: The Tribute, a four-day festival of events held this past weekend, featured many events focuses on the making of “Jaws” and honored those involved who have died, such as author Peter Benchley and actors Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw.
One of many events, the screening of “Jaws” at Ocean Park on Sunday, Aug. 11 (rescheduled from Saturday because of inclement weather), drew between 1,500 and 1,800 people according, to organizer Susan Sigel Goldsmith. The number was fewer than expected because of the re-scheduling. The film was shown in its new Blu Ray format, three days before the Blu Ray version hit the market.
In addition to the showing of “Jaws,” there was a conservation message, and Martha’s Vineyard Poet Laureate Lee McCormack read his poem, “At the Apex.”
At the Apex
I
The Kyries of Nature abound in blood
In dying reefs and daemon floods
That ebb and flow and fall and rise
Between the silences of oceans
And primal notions of civilizations fear.
Along with reefs, the bones of nations fell
In ignorance and lack of willingness
To receive the spiritual gifts
Of ancient myths that gave a human face
To this world’s savagery. Now only man remains
The one, living Apex predator, not prey
And legends of murder fall in greed from tongues
To become the final history our young believe.
Will they also be the ones who, like we, cannot listen
To the creature hymns of Earth and sea
In its radiant multiplicity of animals born
Into this wilderness of purpose and creation?
Or will they also be numb, and only hear the bitter salt
Harshly singing to stones, and the cormorants
Warning cries witnessing the final signs of our failure
To honor this world, its life and radiant energy?
In our lack of faith and infidelity to creation’s mystery
How can we expect salvation from the sea?
II
The Terrifying Radiance of Angels
They come to us in silent beauty
Without mercy or rancor or wings
A terrifying radiance of ghosts and angels
Gliding gracefully out of the shadows
Under man’s primitive, unconscious fear.
They come following a single drop of blood
In one million parts water
Through Nature’s rapacious currents of hunger,
Bearing 400 million years of Earth’s history
And up to forty thousand teeth, in jaws
That, in a single lifetime, will receive
Everything the seas offer without resistance.
They come from the original, genetic
Origins of form and earthly Genesis
To clean the waters of excess and foulness left
When death takes over an animal’s flesh
And turns it to debris.
From the living oceans they serve faithfully
They come to us without mercy or rancor or wings
Worshipping the sacred, distant electricity
Of motions and vibrations we can never see
Guardians, takers of life, resplendent and divergent, these
Flying wraiths, goblins, ghosts defying gravity —
Necessary and predatory, radiant Angels of the Sea.