Interior of the Museum--(albumen silver print, Robert Macpherson, 1811–1872)
collections.lacma.org/object/142590
poem written for online poetry class
Arched corridor of quiet, a long stillness unfolding forward as if the air itself remembers how centuries move. Light drifts in thinly, a pale wash across the stone, touching each figure with the gentlest insistence. Statues keep their marble vigil~ solemn faces turned toward a brightness that never fully arrives, as though waiting for a footstep that history forgot to send. Busts line the passage like a council of still minds, each one caught mid-thought, each one holding a silence that feels older than the room. Shadows pooling like old thoughts gather at their bases, soft and deliberate, settling into the floor as if memory has weight and knows where to rest. The vaulted ceiling holds a quiet reverence, stone and time slowly exhaling, arching into dimness. Here, history holds its breath. Not in grandeur, but in the restraint of stillness~ in the way the corridor narrows into a vanishing point that promises nothing and everything at once. Macpherson’s lens consecrates the quiet, turning the museum into a threshold where time folds in on itself, where the past stands watch, where the present enters softly and leaves changed.
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