EACH chapter of Brian Johnstone’s memoir, Double Exposure (Saraband, 2017), includes a poem, “the story-board around which the book has grown.”
SNAP SHOTS
Knowing you’d best not write on the
backs – despite
that enticing space – in case of making indents in the image,
ink leeching through to cloud the black and white,
you took the time to sort each summer to a separate pack,
mark them up with year and place, ready to pass on, the way
your old Box Brownie would be passed on too,
left on its allotted shelf, the only missing element:
yourself. Two things conspired against your careful plan
And we confess them now. One son, too keen on cameras
by half, undid the back, finding not an empty spool
but unexpected roll film still in place – ruined by his action,
lost to light. The second damned this gaffe, and loaded up
the snaps, life story for the telling, so he thought. Forgetting
to secure the box was his mistake. Back home, he found the lot
slid out, undated, rearranged – a car boot sale
of jumbled histories - as random as the memories
we somehow try to save, the present always just too bright,
its glare obscuring everything we thought was black and white.
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