How I might learn to know

by looking at something a long time,
the way head, heart and hands infuse

darkroom chemistry,
Stieglitz trying too hard

to always make the light

exactly what we see:

a planned attempt at definition
not the shredded “failures”

the “self-torture” of editing, cropping, burning in,

the stuff he hid from us.
What does it mean, then, to me?

I begin with some new overblown title:

the gothic mood suggests

Death rideth towards me
and the photogravure

(the grave of photography?)

the scratched blurry effect

of glass plate tech

adding to a blizzard’s mystic blur,

Manhattan slush,

hints of steam escaping a grate in the street.
What is real in a bi-polar storm

from which two horses emerge

trotting patiently

toward you, in a gesture of intent?

The coach driver wielding the whip?
The driver (him, his other?) appears

just in time for his century.

It seems universal, like Malevich,
a field of black and white

where no birds land and where

last summer’s trees remain threadbare.
Only in the looking back – connecting

our own coloured in versions

of what appears

in a hint, a gap in the traffic
I can see myself in there

as if in a glance

at a forever –

cold and white as snow.


Notes: Alfred Stieglitz, Medium: Photogravure; Dimensions: 21.8 x 15.4 cm. (8 9/16 x 6 1/16 in.)