Tempus Igne

time distortions of memory tricks played out of things thought but not old photos tell stranger tales of two dimensional places of younger eyes and tender faces 8mm and slideshows or lockets clasp'd kodachrome and sepia and oh! there's a cameo hidden in the back of grandfather's pocketwatch (it isn't grandmother and her name sounds French!) but they're hollow records of voices, laughter, or the way someone walks as unique as snowflakes but prints fade out like streaking tracers soon only one or two aunties remember who's who in the zoo while great grandkids think the hairstyles look quaint and one of us really seems to favor the guy on the right but move on to pictures of ourselves, will ya!? not knowing that it was a good day in that shot or if war was over, weather hot but time exposes our brief latent images, f-stop for all in our pin-hole lives love, hate, joy, grief parallax'd into flashbulb shadows and afterimages fade carbon arc'd onto dusty shelves carelessly aperture stopped into old shoebox albums and broken frames...