THE PICTURE NOT TAKEN

The Picture Not Taken
Age 65, Snug Harbor, Sealevel, North Carolina, 2010

-- This is one poem, from my autobiographical series of poems, that I posted here at WriteSpike. Go to my Stories section for others. They are in chronological order. --

A deep-sea fish has probably no means of apprehending
the existence of water; it is too uniformly immersed in it...
~ Sir Oliver Lodge, British scientist ~

what does a fish know about water?
I doubt it understands being wet

living in time
what do we know about the moment?

being immersed
we swim because that is what we do

when I look up from my book
I see the shadow of a colonial lamp
projected flat against brick
by the sudden afternoon sun
breaking through the window

I want to reach for my camera
and fix it out of time

instead
over the next half hour
I watch
a slow-motion collision:
the wall and window shadows crash
with the lengthening shadow of the lamp

as a photographer
I know something about time
and most of life is lived outside the lens

today I chose to save this drama
in my fragile memory

and do not allow
the split second it would take
for it to lodge inside my camera