dark spots

 

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In the late nineteenth century, some photographers
claimed not only to capture images 
of loved ones from beyond 
the grave, but to be able to photograph memories
of the deceased, their auras still glowing 
around the bereaved, 
as if to capture light reflected off a body could preserve
that body over time. As Beatrice explains 
the presence of the dark 
spots on the moon to Dante in Paradiso, how
the brightness of a celestial body 
reveals the angelic 
gladness that quickens the body, Letizia that shines as joy
shines through an eye. Visit Fort
Courage—Take Pictures
of the Past, the billboards across Arizona advised,
and at the base of the mountain in 
New Mexico, a note taped 
to the gasoline pump read, Hold tight to your money—the wind
will carry it away. In the snapshot of 
my grandmother in her 
casket, wearing the Elizabethan collar and perm'd
curls she never wore, my mother 
gazes through her 
to a planet she always knew existed but which, without
the darkness, she could never see 
before. They call 
some bruises shiners like the violet stars of the Rose of Sharon
that come out in the morning and shine 
all day in their leaf-black 
shade, shade carved into the yard like fish scales covering
the sarcophagus in Sant'Apollinare in 
Classe near Ravenna 
or the stiff, veined hands of the sycamore stretched wide
in applause, the Italian gesture of mourning.


—Angie Estes

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