Moving Pictures

Images, like morning snow,
Cascade in bright flurries upon waiting retinas,

Covering the barren mind
With a quilt of color and motion,

Awakening experience
From inert thoughts and primal hungers,

Dressing naked reason with
Substance, a sense of immediate truth.

Each new day, a carnival,
A parade of new sights and spectacles,

With a stroke from Time's palette,
Adds another dab to this strange collage.

By night beneath the cloak of sleep,
The sandman shakes these scenes in their drawer,

And with a childlike levity
He spills them hodge-podge onto the floor,

Mixing colors, blending themes,
And in the morn we call them dreams,

Reflections of the images
Which lie submerged in our waking hours.

Within this basement gallery
We admire the visions we have garnered.

Changing, shifting, blurring snapshots,
Filed and sorted and cataloged,

Obsolete and sentimental,
Lie in old photo albums and reel-to-reels

Left behind by Time's caprice,
Still frames, ghostly portraits of existence.

George Chadderdon © 1993