image and the images

smoke exhales from underground streets,

smoke that is the breath,

City winter magnifying the image---

click.

image woman rode me,

framed me under the Washington Square Archway,

grabbing my reflection through her lens:

an obscure frontier poem

about a guy with shaggy sideburns and tall spurs

sailing to Marseille to rendezvous with a dancer---

click.

her resolve:

to untangle images while not sacrificing distance---

to merge abstract forms with blessed Manhattan nights---

flash.

a well sorted stranger paddling down Amsterdam Avenue

like a drunken sailor fighting the undertow---

develop.

and prints capturing subway riders wearing flowery corsets

steaming underneath uptown milky sidewalks,

jaywalkers smoking the pretzel vender air,

and untried portraits forever whizzing past her senses,

while alone in the darkroom

she ponders whether these images are necessary

to surrender what these poems

demand from these photographs.

NYC

1984