Camera obscura
(for Andrei Tarkovsky)
When he forgot to wind on the film,
when the shutter flicked and stalled and stuttered,
he would say ‘it’s that camera – it’s jammed again’.
He was like that, my father, always someone else’s fault.
Until his own life jammed –
or else he forgot to wind it on –
leaving layer upon layer of double exposures.
A pose – just a pose – juxtaposed:
a jumbling of limbs, a tangling of torsos,
his fragmented family, his celluloid boys.
So how is it he’s here again,
emulsified into poolside and picnic and balcony vista?
No parallel universe but each to his unique feeling of time.
Because sometimes we’re just passing time
and sometimes it’s just time passing us.
Published in ‘When Time and Space Conspire’, Leaning Tree, San Antonio, 2017
