Wednesday Words

Photographer
Lorna Crozier

What of the blind photographer?
The one who measures distance
by the warmth of the sun on her eyelids,
the one who hears the picture and snaps
that sound when you hear only silence,
the one who lists fourteen colors of the rain.

You imagine her cloaked and hooded
in a black cloth, a photographer from long ago
who grew images like lichen on glass and copper,
her fingers running over the plates
as if they spoke to her in Braille.

There are days when you blind yourself
with too much longing. Light is
tactile then. With its many hands
it washes the dullness
from your skin, touches all
that can’t be seen and makes it glow.

— from The Wild in You: Voices from the Forest and the Sea (Greystone Books, 2015)