Disappearing Act
By Felicity Plunkett
Published 19 October 2023
for Bas Jan Ader
(1942-1975)
‘because gravity overpowers me’
Things tilt,
fall
over and we
do, stasis the moment
before the forwards-
jolt. In a slippery-shingled world
gravity became your ludic conspirator:
your avant heavy with visions
of afterwards.
Early conceptual work
charts falls: from a bike into
an Amsterdam canal;
into a trestle (‘Broken Fall’);
from a chair perched
on the roof, becoming
again the bundle your parents
threw to make
an impossible escape. Fall I,
Los Angeles 1970
can neither forget nor recall
1944.
At two, your father’s execution
meant only abandonment.
Resistance, courage, harbouring
the persecuted: ideas beyond
the world of your days.
The words of your work:
a toddler’s small syllables:
PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME
Later, in a film so stark
(then a postcard, another film,
a photo: endless formation)
unstopped tears
collect all tears:
I’m too sad to tell you:
testimony of one who saw
but could not phrase:
particles of innocent witness.
And knowing, through it all
grief’s isolation
and the falling of all art:
thoughts unsaid
then forgotten.
At the end,
a Search For the Miraculous:
and lonely voyage to
break a-
cross
the Atlantic
fall into the vanishing point
no roof, windows
tilt, no earth
all
tilt: the sea’s windows
opening to the miraculous.
In 2012, poet Felicity Plunkett led students of Hornsby Girls' High School on a journey to uncover their own poetry object, using Red Room Poetry's Cabinet of Lost and Found learning resource. Felicity composed this poem for the school as part of the workshop experience.