The Day the Earth Stood Still - Aug 1 2026

 

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Aug 1 2026

In the still photograph 

the moment is caught,

the way a flashbulb 

going off in the dark

burns an afterimage into your eye.

Arresting time,

so the instant the shutter is snapped

the universe has stopped expanding,

the galaxy no longer circles,

and the planets are locked in place,

arrayed around the sun

like the paper mâché

you made in grade school.

While the earth slams to a stop; 

the spin

that all our lives we never noticed

seizing up

just like that,

as if the gods had jammed

a cosmic wrench into its gears.

And with that jolt 

we’re all abruptly ejected 

along with everything else

not tied down or bolted on,

momentum

hurling us off into space

at 1600 k.

When time is rendered meaningless

and we too

find ourselves frozen in the ether.

Just as the photo remains

exactly the same

for all posterity.

So the food stays hot

the laughs as raucous

the thoughts as nascent,

no one ages

or becomes infirm,

and the dog doesn’t die.

This is the magic

of still photography.

It rescinds the physical laws

that govern the universe

and turns us into time travellers.

Lets us see in a way

both uncanny and unnatural.

And frees us to imagine

whatever happened

before and after

and outside the frame.

So it isn’t true

that time only moves in one direction.

Turns out

you can go back again.

This is hardly my first poem about still photography. Because a snapshot has this uncanny power: the way it lets us interrogate a moment, see the world in the most unnatural way. Unlike video, it leaves room for imagination: what came before, what came after, what’s outside of the frame. We see ourselves not as a mirror image, but as others see us. And it can evoke bittersweet nostalgia, as well as embarrassment and regret. It tells the story we tell ourselves.

(1600k is, of course, a rounding. (Luckily, it both rhymes and scans!) Plus the speed depends on where you are, since the planet circles faster at the equator than it does at the poles.)