Poems from the Darkroom
-It takes time in the darkroom to bring into focus the meaning we’ve made of our lives
Imprinted stills
Proof of life
Picked up at the corners
and held to the light
A body of work
made of muscle and flesh
A lost art developed
from a landmarked distance
We hid them to protect them
then forgot where they were
We saw their reflections
and cast them in dreams
Now dredged and named
and hung one by one
We signed the originals
while still recognizable
We captured their honesty
before letting them fade
exposed how they shaped us
frame by frame
__________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United / dVerse Poets Pub
March 14th, 2021 1:30 am
Fascinating insight into the photography of yester-year, and brilliant metaphor for other kinds of looking back and sorting memories.
I like the calm mood you’ve created with the almost-formal regularity of the verses.
March 14th, 2021 1:50 am
Frame by frame, one by one, line by line I read this and savored. Great stuff, CR.
March 14th, 2021 2:21 am
My older brother took up photography and became quite good at it doing weddings etc., as well as being at sporting events and selling pictures to the newspapers in the UK. Your piece took me back to those long gone days.
March 14th, 2021 3:25 am
I love how this poem took me back many years to when I was a member of a photography club; we had our own dark room and did all our own developing. I have only a couple of photos left from that time. This is a vivid extended metaphor of a poem, Colleen, with a frame-by-frame shape!
March 14th, 2021 11:30 am
Reading your beautifully crafted poem reinforced my decision to sort thru more than a thousand old black and whites ~ an early Covid project ~ unearthing more treasure than I thought possible. Cheers.
March 14th, 2021 11:58 am
There’s nothing quite like an old black-and-white photograph to draw us into our collective memory. We don’t even have to know who’s in the photo; we just need to journey into its grainy depths.
March 14th, 2021 2:14 pm
This is a gentle reminder to organize those photos that were handed down but every time I try, one gets lost in the memories.
Thanks and cheers!
March 14th, 2021 3:05 pm
I wonder sometimes about how past versions of me might look at the person I’ve become. While sometimes I look at past versions of me with a sense of amusement (fashion in the 80’s) I am sympathetic to them and their various faults and grateful that they did the work to wrestle with those flaws.
March 14th, 2021 3:32 pm
There something magical that happens in a darkroom – and in this poem.
March 15th, 2021 4:28 am
i like how the last stanza sort of sums up the poem. looking at the photos (prints from film), we can see how we have changed.
great write!
March 19th, 2021 4:27 am
Nice extended metaphor. I really sense your love for the creative process.
March 19th, 2021 12:01 pm
It is so refreshing Colleen to be brought back to the realities of the old-time Darkroom experience. Those days of mixing the hypo and adjusting the enlarger and working on the skills little by little until a perfect print is achieved. Thanks for the memories Ma’am!
Hank
March 19th, 2021 10:52 pm
Great metaphor for those faces in the photographs who shaped us and how the images fade with time but who we are remains.
March 20th, 2021 12:22 pm
Back to the dark room, capturing life frame by frame!
March 21st, 2021 3:59 pm
I wonder how much we are missing today by not taking the time to process what we know a frame at a time… today it’s all instant and instantly forgotten.