Still working on the boot camp prompt for Day Four, as it involves research and the information I read today needs to sit a little while before it becomes something. More tomorrow. For now, a poem I fell in love with yesterday.
The Photographer
In Memory of Tom Victor
It wasn't my soul he captured
in his intricate box
but his idea of the poet
as beautiful woman. He ran ahead
kneeling in front of me,
a seductive supplicant murmuring:
"lovely, lovely... turn
your head a little... lick your lips,"
as if he were instructing me
in the myriad gestures of love.
And in those moments
I became beautiful for him,
you can see it in the finished photograph
which rose like Venus
from its bath of chemicals.
When I look at that picture now I see
a woman with widened eyes, a fan
of hair, iconic cheekbones,
a woman quite different
from the plain one I see
in the mirror every day.
I was transformed as language itself
is transformed and quivers in a poem, though
the words themselves, taken separately,
would seem quite ordinary.
-Linda Pastan
from Queen of a Rainy Country (Norton, 2006)
