The Lens as Ars Poetica

Click goes the Nikon Coolpix L830 I lifted from its patina encrusted grave. In the frame, two swallowtail butterflies, one yellow, one dark, sip on pale dogwood flowers. What lies out of frame? Well, simply move within the frame of my own eyes and ears—the yellowjacket’s buzz chases me from the branches. Absent still from that frame crawl innumerable invertebrates and microorganisms to enable such a scene.

Who needs a red wheelbarrow’s wet glint chopped into lines, carved from an incomplete scene, when the shape of these paragraphs only persist against a blue screen ocean? Can we even feel it? Would we bleed as one does scraping the outline of a coral colony? How much more of ourselves would have to leak to grasp at what lies in the blue beyond? The camera shatters at full zoom.

If you looked at those paragraphs and were like “what, that’s not a poem,” think again! I took inspiration for today’s piece from Saint Trey Wooden’s NaPoWriMo day 12 prompt to write a prose poem! You can check out his prompt here.