Light was his paradigm: he wove it, a cat's cradle to knot them in, eyes rounded to the dead instant on paper - an 8 x 10 moment - glossy. It was a trade of stealth, the black box a trap for the unstilted gesture; and maybe that is why he stole things - ashtrays, wives, and Bibles - always in need of basics. He had compassion for the unpossessed objects scarred by the anonymity of hotel rooms, never taking the new, only those roughed with use like the corroded edge of his pant cuff. And the wives: perhaps it was the stealth and the way he saw them in secret under the catafalque of the camera's cloth, smiles buried upside down on ground glass, a mask reversed; and still their skirts were neat - defying gravity. Like a Japanese who has saved a life, having seen them exposed, he felt responsible. Late at night, after they had left, he enlarged their faces and watched them bloom blank paper, a monochrome resolve, swimming from alkali to acid. He hung them on a clothesline and left the room ambushed by drying smiles. There were six wet handkerchiefs and one dry that would not cry here, in the cold silence of folding chairs. The blurred faces turned to the clattering edge of sunlight and walked into their own focus, while his portrait, in a blue blazer, was nailed down to its dark frame. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LITANY OF THE DARK PEOPLE by COUNTEE CULLEN JONES'S PRIVATE ARGYMENT by SIDNEY LANIER EPITAPH IN A CHURCH-YARD IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA by AMY LOWELL DOCTOR OF BILLIARDS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON |