Of Photographs and Memory

.

There was a time when  

Faces were frozen in memory. 

When light and shadow  

Sketched contours on a page 

Painting precious portraits  

You carried in your heart. 

Photographs that faded, if at all, 

Into softer patinas, 

Gently smoothing the 

Harder edges of reality. 

Pressed between pages, 

Sweet surfaces traced 

By loving fingers 

Again, and yet again.

Immune to the 

Willful distortion of 

Pixels flitting across 

An endlessly malleable,  

Constantly updating,  

Screen, that daily 

Presents us with images 

Slowly sliding into strangers. 

.