The Day Kodachrome Died Poem by Caroline Misner

A seventy four year old man has died today.
Weep for him.
The clear orb of his eye that has painted
the earth’s portrait with clean deft strokes,
cast a frieze of the twentieth century,
is now closed.

The ink has run dry
on slow summer green reflected
in still lake waters;
the chain mail of the sky;
the in between shadows in the folds
of a mountain, or a lady’s burqa;
dappled sunlight on the backs of horses;
the iridescence of the stars,
no matter what constellation they are in;
the unsolved legacies of the sun
that gathers prisms in sprays of water.

He’s left behind the dust
of a decrepit city;
the shop windows shuttered
like a camera lens.

Someday some future archaeologist may find
a cache of treasure from another time
like the crates of slides in my father’s closet,
sitting in their plastic carousels,
proper ladies in Sunday finery
riding the painted horses at a fair.
They won’t dance anymore.

Gather round his imprint, friends
and mourners, come see the still
life of frozen moments,
proving that this world once existed,
that we were here.