Black & White Portraits Poem by nathan martin

A flicker of the lens, a shutter in a box
and light becomes storyteller
shadow becomes shaman.

enameled faces held
fasened in a 5x8 frame
fill the pages of albums, the
carbon copied souls are kept like
dried leaves pressed and flattened.

they germinate through the years,
growing in wisdom, the inanimate vapors
yielding such a happy set of ghost.

while black ink corrosively set
upon phosphorus turns in it's elements
speaking in still life a thousand words.