Time Elapse

He set up the time exposure. His camera tightly set upon
the tripod with the shutter open and the lens set wide to
capture the lines of the lightning bugs dancing around

his roses on the hot summer night. Brilliant light paths
cut into his emulsion while the dull yet beautiful roses
slowly inched their way onto the photo with their sullen

beauty caught on film through the patience of their
vegetative state, returning a glimpse towards the cycloptic
peek with an acceptance of low-light inevitability. Posing in

this way they seared an image onto his attempt at art.
Yet strangely when he returns and bathes his visaged
film in stinking fluid, he sees what was never expected

inside his long-set look. Caught within the darkened
frame of rosebush queen with yellow insectoid crown
a ghostly cat stares back at him. Whether by design

or in strange awareness understood at levels he could
never comprehend his feline ghost stands still beneath
the bush and stared at his handiwork for spectral image

capture. She of padded-foot stalk had stopped to look
upon this strange three-legged creature and paused
at length to show her limpid eyes to his metered glimpse.

Now a separate regal ghosting invades his photo and there
upon this serendipitous canvas of silver and celluloid
he sees ,frozen in partial wink, an eternity of curiosity.

~ Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner ~