What’s a Picture Worth?

A picture’s an interesting thing. Sometimes it shows exactly what you wanted it to show. Sometimes it reveals more than you wanted it to reveal.  And often, for me, it simply fails to stand up to what I see with my eyes.

Whatever it was I saw, which I tried to capture–the picture’s not cooperating. It doesn’t do the light or colors justice. Or my eye obligingly ignored details I didn’t want to have present–those which the camera faithfully recorded.

That doesn’t stop me, mind you, from trying to get a better picture. One which more adequately represents what I had in my mind’s eye.

For example, the parking lot pic above doesn’t do much to express what I saw or felt at the moment I took the shot. However, it recalls that memory for me, automatically. Yet, knowing what I meant doesn’t do anything to actually communicate that meaning to others. Hence this poem:

A Picture’s Worth

Every morning, mountains rise out of sleep,
sharpen themselves on the sun’s whetstone
as sunlight scrapes itself across the landscape.

Whether you see sunrise live or separated
by camera lens, filter, digital stamp,
you know the way the image paints itself

in memory, encapsulates a moment
that lands with all the others to make you you.
Everything you excised stands just off-screen:

the rough-cut path along whispering dry stalks,
the mule deer musing the man-made strait,
and you wondering how much horizon you can take.

What can be saved? The memory, the pixels,
the thousand words that don’t express what needs said?

If you enjoyed A Picture’s Worth

You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.  Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.

Opinions & comments can be left below.

Have a great week!