In Camera
Jan 15 2017


The sense of detachment 
behind the camera
is one way to pass through the world.

I feel protected, there;
shrouded in my black drape
peering through my blinkered frame.

A tight shot, on fast film
a shallow depth of field;
like life, thin-sliced
glimpsed through a keyhole. 

Glass plays with light,
breaking, and bending, and sending it back
so nothing is 
as it seems.
Its constant speed,
even as time is stopped
and light caught
in endless shades of grey.

How clear
if there were nothing between us?
No clouded lens, flawed cornea
murky layer of tears?
If all of you entered
would your light strike me blind?

While so much hides
in plain sight
or wilful illusion.
And memory 
weaves its fabulous tales;
conjuring the past 
in the red glow
of its dark cloistered chamber.

How a picture appears
in its fixative bath,
the slow reveal
the moment captured.
And a photograph yellows
in back of sticky drawer,
which has, for years, held fast.

If the eyes
are a window into the soul
how long can I keep them closed,
before the darkness
is overwhelming?




The Latin in camera at first glance confuses. It seems to suggest openness, because a camera looks in; but, of course, actually means “in secret session”.  Since the poem is about the slipperiness of reality, I thought the inherent confusion of this term  made a good title.  I like how the opening stanza then whipsaws the reader from secrecy to seeing.

We live in a visual world, and seeing is believing. Or is it? Because everything we know as true is merely a representation,  reproduced in the hermetic darkness of the skull and mind. And depends on incomplete information, on attention and salience, and on the psychological tricks played by circumstance, mood, and predisposition. 

Memory is not fixed. The brain is not a movie camera. Every time we recall something, the memory is remade:  depending on the context, certain aspects are reinforced, embellished, or suppressed. This confabulation makes even the past unreliable. 

The poem alternates between photography (non-digital) and the camera of the eye, between vision and perception. It touches on memory and our incomplete understanding of reality, and in so doing seems to be working through some failed relationship and inner struggle. Nothing is specified. I want the reader to read him/herself into it.