Well Bottom Blues

A post prompted by the editor’s note to the November 2025 Poetry I had left unopened. Poetry resembles photography from the age of the film camera.  There was no phone in your hand. You had to fetch the thing, load it with film carefully and advance it to the ready, wait for the flash to recycle while you frame something in the tiny eyepiece; then, that mechanical click and waiting for the film to be developed and printed and picked up, or holding the Polaroid photo by the corner watching the image  slowly resolve. Both are an active process, requiring attention to detail and patience to craft a careful and durable bit of memory.

And so an old poem:

Polaroid

Moments
frozen

Iris fixed In
astonishment

That mousetrap click
quick, before

Spontaneous
composition

Is lost
in thought

Associations
whirring

Out of my mouth
Polaroid words

Fixed instantly
to paper

Flash bulb
transient

Clock stop
transcendence

Slow chemical
revelation:

Green eyes,
a violet flower

Taped to the wall
of my skull

Forever