The Eye and the Photograph

Circuitously trekked, the eye's labored ride
Tripping on thin lengths of wave,
Leering at the irreconcilable texture,
The untouchable colour.

I did not avert, we have never diverted,
From this course, from this insistence
On symmetry and balance,
The erotica of a triangle,
The majesty of a circle.

I did abide the brutal watch these several score years
Uncorrupted and unquestioning, stalwart, the sun-eyed sentinel
Tethered like an orphan to the shadow of his missing keeper,
Vigilant against the fluttering of leaves,
The sudden movement in a mirror;
And staked my empire upon the veracity of reflections.

The eye’s gathering lens will assimilate
The whole of your meaning in an unremitting blink.
Stand thee well.

I have seen you all in the fleeing cinema of moments.
I have held you to a scrutiny of flashes.
You are all absorbed, all contained,
Held in perpetual motion orbiting
The round rim of my skull.
Soon I will set you free.

So many have I measured, the unfathomable faces,
The curved bone and muscle and other parts
Made nearly-real through the silent prisms,
Enthralled eighty years by a trick of pixels.

What a trust to make, what a discourse,
The whole earth, the universe, balanced
Like a seal, its nose upon my retina.

And you, who I see now so still,
White and luminous as a star,
Irresistible mesmerist,
At the moment of the spoken oaths,
Standing fixed on the wall walking
Along the little dirt road
Leaning against a wind that never blows,
Exquisitely poised in a square frame of wood.

To see and say it is what it is.
Flat and small as a fairy, you are immortal.

(c) Rhett Talley