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 Three
Photographs
Somewhere in the world there is a photograph of me
Standing on boulder beside Moses Lake, and
Holding a tumbleweed the size of a bathtub
High above my head like a trophy, naked
Photo was taken by my friend Jane
We were just out of college and irrepressible
High on abstractions like "freedom" and "power"
And I would have said that's what I was expressing with that gesture
But later, when I sent the film out to be processed
And it came back with just that photo missing
I felt cheated and humiliated, like my freedom and power had been
taken
And used against me
And I wonder if that photo survives even still
Taped inside the door of the janitor's locker
That's dense with layer of overlapping confiscated photos
That were taken for enthusiasm or abstraction
Taken, taken but not given back
Somewhere in the world there is a photograph of me
It was taken by a man I was in love with
On the morning he left for three weeks in Paris
Anything can happen in three weeks time
And I'd been sleepless and crying all night beside him
While he slept deep and untroubled, woke efficient and sharp
Packed his clean shirts in his matching Travelsmart luggage
Checked once more for passport, ticket, credit card
Then just before he walked into that blinding daylight and hailed
a taxi
He turned to me and took my picture
Standing there in the hallway in his redwings t-shirt
Empty handed, red eyed, and then he was gone
Twenty three days later
At four-thirteen am
When he touched down at LaGuardia
It wasn't me he phoned
And I picture that photo in a stack of color snapshots
Here's La Tour Eiffel; here's La Place de la Concorde
Here's Le Pantheon; here's La Sorbonne
And here's an attraction he came to
Wide eyed, curious, detached
And then moved on
Somewhere in the world there is a photograph of me
It was taken by a stranger with a telephoto lens
He was about twenty feet away on a small rock ledge
I was roped in and climbing up the sheer cliff face
Two hundred feet above the valley floor on dicey toe and finger
holds
And unaware that he was there
I was green enough to trust the rope
Good enough to have the hang of friction
I was fearless and focused on that subtle change of balanceġ.
Choice...risk...reach...contact...push...center...counterbalance...
The long stretch...
Then I heard his shutter and he muttered something like "magnificent!"
And my consciousness zoomed out to take in the big picture
And there I was, a girl in lime green lycra
Spidered by her fingertips, high on a granite precipice
In a glorious and impossible pose
Letting go would be too easy
Instead I climbed on
But cautious now and studied
Self-conscious of the significance of my relationship to the ground
And hearing those words in my head that always speak my mother's
voice
"Careful nowġ"
But that moment, captured and lost in the blink of a shutter
Forever fixed and broken
And collected somewhere in the world
Might be the shining golden moment of my lifetime
When everything rose up together, all at once and perfectly
And then began a slow descent
©1998 Annie Gallup
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