The town fathers
are long neglected by scavenging vultures,
locked up as they are,
in the wood cabin, we call the town museum.
Inside the shack, there are old tintypes, sepia
photographs and the usual rural relics.
Outside, a small patch of lawn
divides the past from a main road,
one that bridges our hamlet
between two swelling and brawling cities.
Those cities also have their metropolitan relics,
grand achievements forever displayed
for groups of bored schoolchildren.
Outside, vultures are shood away
by men in HazMat suits.
Our community fathers are black-suited
grim featured farmers and church dignitaries,
even the mayors that are still alive
look out from their portraits
as if wishing for the odd vulture or two.
Nothing else around here bothers
enough to matter much.
Fields are pushed back beyond backyards.
We killed off all the rattlesnakes years ago.
Categories:
tintypes, poetry,
Form: Free verse
The etching point
Of emotion-
A dark plate
For splash of light-
Stillness the contrast…
Tintype-a human heart…
I have an old Tintype,
A soldier and his lovely lady;
Radiant a pair as one would
Like to see,
When thinking of love
And what love should be-
Now both long gone,
The photo faded somewhat,
But fine enough for me.
The hand-painted colors
A bit muted,
Steels acid reaction to time
And pigment-
My own spots just as real
An acid reaction
To light and what I reject
In the name of image-
An ongoing transparency,
At times more evasive
Then illumining,
More the nature of prying,
Unsettling,
Not at all caressing as silk
Contours to the human form,
Drapes,
Hugs without disturbing
The sleek, smooth
Nakedness inside-
Him, the handsome young soldier
In just right uniform,
Her, wearing a bonnet
With flowers made of ribbon,
Not a thorn to surprise-
On a white bench in a garden
Somewhere long ago,
We know they lived and cherished
One another,
And knew in their hearts
The photo sighs
"Only Tintypes never cry."
Categories:
tintypes, allegory, allusion, heartbreak, lost
Form: Free verse
Boxes of photographs in the closet
As life goes on, it piles up in our mindset
Hoping to catch every bit of the good times
You’ve been there, and again you live within its confines
Aging as it appears, but fresh memories linger on
Every picture tells a story; the evocative sensation will come upon
Rain and shine, the time elapsed unwittingly
Funny stories would spring up, and we laughed uncontrollably
For tintypes of pictures, a tracing of who they were
Some had writings on the back with dates and dedication preferred
A timely choice to look at your first birthday attire
With friends and relatives gathered around in a choir
Old photos from graduation and prom
Be amazed by how friends’ images have transformed
Capture a moment and freeze it in time forever
Only memories will remind as a quick refresher
Pose a picture with loved ones for time will steal them tomorrow
Old familiar places and happenings that you would still know
Each frame becomes precious possession of one’s life
Turn the album’s page and read each moment’s writing with light
July 18, 2015
Categories:
tintypes, image, light, memory, missing,
Form: Rhyme
In crackled tintypes bent with long ago,
Amid flaxen sunset and skies of cherry—
In worn leather-carved ancient scenario,
He dare not lie in milkweed prairie.
He rides resolute toward that sweat-tinged fame,
Always the heart’s hero of our once young eye,
As pale ivory range sighs softly his name
And we all know the real reason why.
It is high sage country that he will ride,
As that tin sun burns alabaster away—
And new birthed rains roll off his cow rancher hide,
So his soft summer’s mirage will stay.
Some see him crude – of but limited worth—
Lacking pure knowledge or certain savoir-faire—
But born of bone plain, he is of no fool’s birth—
A force of nature that’s always there.
From coat’s patina past years slide, of course,
As lines are spurred so deep into his Sphinx face—
But he’d rather be poised high atop his horse
In no other country, time or place.
His heritage is long – it’s here he’ll die—
He rides his own land in cruel spring rains and snows—
And like that wax jacket, he’ll keep his hopes dry,
Because ranching is all that he knows.
Categories:
tintypes, cowboy-western, hope, introspection, nostalgia,
Form: Cowboy Poetry
You are the face in a faded photograph
from a past that is not your own. You are
an image of your mother, her hand at her breast,
touching with butterfly fingers the gossamer
fold of her gown. You are the DNA of your friends
in their celluloid Peter Pan collars, their dickeys
beneath sweaters, their one good string of pearls,
pins of cameo. They go retrograde, just as you will.
You comfort each other in the hope of heaven,
blurring beyond sepia borders of tintypes,
a slow curling and browning at their edges,
although photographs share a shelf life greater
than your own. As delicate as your mother's hand
on her silky dress, souls are no doubt weightless--
drift lightly into the presence of angels,
principalities, cherubim and seraphim. How is it
that there is room for all this lost and found?
Did God cry, "Let there be rain," and the rain
fell down, each drop a piece of baggage deleted
from heaven? When skies become heavy
and black, when clouds spill thundering rain,
is it the carry-ons, the suitcases of the dead,
making room for the living?
Categories:
tintypes, fantasy
Form: Narrative