Photography

If color photography is reality.
the visual equivalent of prose,
what happened before Cyclop's eye
at one specific sliver of time, what it saw
but couldn't completely register
in the rods and cones to the brain,
what was, but may never be again, not
exactly that same way, ever ...
black and white photography is poetry,
a glimpse at what the heart sees
that will live forever, frozen in time
and place and memory, static
but static like electricity,
life and emotion jolting
you awake to something right in
front of you, Once blind, but now
seeing. We need both, color and cold facts
to catalogue events and memories;
black and white film or phrasing
to let us see beyond.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2012