Photography’s highest form is sometimes likened to poetry, capturing experiences that defy denotation. Both are diminished to the extent they require explanation, some say, so hopefully coercing them to explain each other is a right born of two wrongs.
The lit side is scorched
The other left to infinite cold
Our thin atmospheres doing little to mitigate
The difference.Sparkling trails
Mark the passage of comets
Passing haphazardly on sleds until pulled in
By our gravity.
“No, you’re not doing it right,” she chides
striking a pose to demonstrate
how a dog—or is it a cat or rabbit?
would stand here on this game trail
we’ve followed into the thicket
along the river.“Hold on a sec, bub,” I call now
as she runs ahead, almost out of sight
talking aloud to the dog, the cat and rabbit
while I stoop to capture an image
of the moment.“Take my hand,” she commands
when I catch up and she steps up
to balance atop a magical beast
disguised as a log.Then she leaps, runs and stumbles
pausing just long enough
to laugh aloud.
In the half-light of fire
Synthetic fibers recoil and wilt
Unnoticed
“Jeez, what happened to my gloves?” we might later lament.But now we lean closer
And watch the steam curl and rise
Without remark
Except to say, “Man, I wish this fire would get hotter.”And then we quietly contemplate
The meaning of life and death
Only to conclude
That Jeremy’s idea,“vanilla vodka and root-beer,” was not so bad.
A smooth stone
Skipping over the face of the deep
Width of space and length of timeOnce
A warm breeze
Spreading the scent of wild flowers
Cut grass and a care-free dayNow
A white ridge
Sending life to forest and hill below
Beneath cloud and billowed skyEver
Consciousness
Rippling predictably along
Dirt trails and neural networksA sense of synchronicity.
Proudly she looks round
Knowing the superior history of
Her United States
As taught with books and glue
Pipe cleaners and colored tissues
In the public school
Where all agree.
Retreating to the shade
While Jess finished recording the
Visible echoes of past intentions
I observed another perspective on a now
Familiar Flickr subject: the
Broken panes giving jagged dimension to
Anyman looking narrowly past
Broken promises while proud
Flags flap, flap the virtues
Purchased with shattered lives
Laying in shards, unseen
At his feet.
Plain is Promoted to Metaphor
History And Hyperbole Trade Places
To Carry a Casket of Wood
Filled With Infallible Missives
Toward a Grave Hermeneutic
Radiant Glory
A Withered Memory
As the Son Flower
Stoops to its Original Earth
Begotten Not Born
Indwelling Transcendence
Infinite Regress
Uncertain Progress
Neutral Density
Gradient Filter
Improve the sky
Carbon Fiber
Cable Release
Unwavering eye
Stop Down
Slow Shutter
Focus far and nearby
Wide Angle
Waist Deep
Better proportions, that’s why
Algorithm
Histogram
Cameras don’t lie
Pink Promises
Fade and then Freeze
Fated to Shatter on a Shoulder
Turned Cold
Around the Inevitable Axis
Of the Earth.
by Jason Abbott