Camera obscura

I could capture everything
with one hand

It was our last day
at the mouth
of the river and its turning

We visited the elongating woman
and her valiant child her stout blond boy
where spirits enter the world
uncoiling
the tree its swing
wooden and waiting
within its arc
a mother once a sad faithful woman
my mother
still attending from two frayed ropes

I captured it

I captured my daughter running
between water and violet
fire and viridian
emeralds and ancestors their green
day bed of reveries
a mythology of first days

I captured the mythology of first days

I captured the great tree
reigning
the river ensconcing
encoding
spirits approaching
poets remembering
silent blue sounds yellow in the air yellow
in my hands and nostrils

Of course I want to cry

I believed I owned all of this by virtue of recognition
and capture

Spirits in the cemetery did this
I’m fairly certain I purposely left
my shoes
on the beach take those malcontents lying
in the throat of earth behind
tongues of stone and names
and dates vanishing greedy
even without their bodies

The earth does not cleanse them
religions are wrong
They took the camera and will never return it
We are hidden
in their earth and ash in the earth
and ash of their hearts

for the earth is not theirs it never was as it is not ours

Fortunately the swing was a camera

Fortunately the sky is a camera

Fortunately I am the camera

my leg is the camera

There are other explanations
Someone in the airport
Some things never leave the island
shells and lava stones for example inanimate
intimate witnesses I suppose I too
will one day be kept behind

At this thought at night
to the rhythm of my breathing
and my wife’s breathing furrowing
with our few seeds breathing up and breathing
down while squirrels run
up and run down on the other side
of the dark glass hurrying
and hurrying for a few seeds
I review everything I can remember
our daughter the dazzling viridian
the mossy Arthurian the hurrying forward
and back the kicking and chasing the bright
blue ball the bright blue bowl of sky
she will remember and identify with
I pray
from a time when I was with her
at the mouth of the river



Camera obscura [#53]
© 2010 Fammerée


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Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


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Photograph by Fammerée

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