Photographs and Drawings - a Sequence

(i)

In a 19th Century central European sitting room

Encircled by walking sticks pocket watches and black clothing

We were caught embracing carelessly in an aging daguerreotype      

Which was unable to magnify your monochrome lips and half-raised eyebrows

Because you had just read the declaration of Paul Delaroche

That from today painting is dead

And you cried Suerat tears. 

(ii)

During the revolution we will fraternize with the history of the world

And breathe the transient moments without indifference

And they will discover in you an orator whose words were never recorded

Until the correlation of your placid features

With the unfailing new technologies of the reformation

And if we meet again it will be in a theater without actors

Or as spies for a country that no longer exists.

(iii)

Before you ended the longest winter in recent memory with another negation

We crowded into this moment of normalcy

To wait for the reflection of the planet on the interactive waves

And in tide pools you found pebbles and purple dead starfish

While I found sunglasses that contained the scent of an unknown woman

And even though I finger-painted your face into the sand

There was no chronicle of our deferment on the white colored beach

Because of ebbs and flows.

(iv)

After the disappearance of the expedition

Attempting to reach the north pole by air balloon

You retreated into our perplexing memories

Until subsequent adventurers discontinued the unaltered accident scene

To tamper with the lingering images on your long frozen negatives.

Now at the museum there is a series of pictures in the gallery of exploration

Including one of you and me under the tree with a sapphire ocean on the horizon

And they asked me to write a caption for the exhibition

But I could only write one sentence and this was that

The very first photograph on your recently developed roll of film

Is the very last one I will ever have of me and you and your parted lips.

I did not write that the photograph was taken just before we kissed

And then you attempted to reach the North Pole by air balloon.

(v)

The photograph was taken during the time when

The colored leaves that must be waded through to reach the car

Were still a pleasant distraction and not yet a wet annoyance.

I remember that you kissed me on the street and said

We would stay in touch because people like us do.

We raced away from the camera and dove into an assortment of colored leaves

And smiled for the last time with the automatic timer.

Between kisses there still is enough time to remember something.

Mostly I will remember how your orange hair

Could never be covered up in a pillow fight or by too many colored leaves.

(vi)

At sunset during the only total eclipse of the century

I stood barefoot in the wet ocean sand to photograph the absence of the sun at sunset

And you emerged from a sea cave or tide pool to conceal my view.

In the pictures you are dancing on the beach in deteriorating currents of light

And in your left hand you carry Camus' the Stranger.

If I were a painter I wouldn't have this predicament

I said.

Because the painter is not an unequivocal witness for the eyes

You said.

Do you believe in love at first sight

You said.

That's the second time I've heard this

I said.

I said yes.

But this was before you said if we were on a sailboat

You would decry my unwillingness to wait for more wind.

One dusk evening blanketed in later we were doubting

Whether seagulls descend to the shore en masse and invisible in the half-light.

I have alchemic memories from this time with you

You said later.

(vii)

I remember the night the president died

Because across the bay there were crunchy leaves

And orange street lights twining up dark village hills in straight lines

And I wondered                

Why it must always be an Indian summer and not simply a false one.

 I was overcome by an oppressive desire

To persuade a fellow beachcomber into recasting himself

As a prop from Albert Camus the Stranger

So I did

But his reaction reminded me more of Edvard Munch the Scream.

And you remember the day the president died

Because the next morning as a prisoner in a foreign country

I called you on the phone and ended with

"I love you"

But I'm not sure if they understood this.