Am I OverExposed?

Posted byauthorstewPosted inpoetryTags:, , , , , , ,
Photo by Me
There’s something about being over exposed
That changes perception
The way others see you and the way you see yourself
Even in the plainest of things
You see them differently 
When they are laid out too long in the sun
The light shining too bright, too long upon the eye

A field of simple cattails, browned by the passage of time
Their season nearly passed
Nothing remarkable, you’d not look twice as you drive by
Much as you drove by me, time after time
Yet when exposed
The light reveals as much as it takes away
The details fade but the contrasts shout

You notice things you did not before
Much as you noticed me when naked upon your floor
The small tufts of white upon the black fuzz of their heads
Now stand out, blown by the wind saying hello
Simple black and white
When you said everything is a shade of grey
Shows more than all the greyscale conversation shading

So I sit here, among the weeds
Exposed by your soliloquies
Lies told and truths unclothed
Showing the black among the white
All blending together
The foreground clear against a background black
Still unsure if you can see me

Am I Overexposed?

This is for a dVerse prompt: Your poetics challenge today is to incorporate a landscape or cityscape into your poetry that either mirrors or amplifies your interior landscape (or lack thereof).

When reading the prompt I knew I was going to use one of my pictures as inspiration, as I tend to take a lot of landscape photos. I chose this picture of a field of cattails. The original picture is a field of brown cattails on an winters pond. I edited the photo cranking up the exposure and making it black and white to get the picture above.

In exploring the picture and incorporating an interior landscape the poem becomes a bit of an ekphratic poem in that it not only uses the landscape but describes the picture which all together describes the interior landscape of the narrator. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! 😊

Published by authorstew

C. Stuart Lewis creates poems with feeling, intelligence and sex appeal. His short stories and books focus on characters that feel real in real world situations. Originally from the United States he now resides in Ontario, Canada. Check out his webpage at TheAuthorStew.ca

12 thoughts on “Am I OverExposed?”

  1. great meld of word and image. the exposure photographically to me seems to be a change in perspective revealing what was already there. also exposure calls up an unsafety.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Yes it is all about how you see what is there. And exposure can be unsafe if when exposed you’re not in a safe place or around those who are safe with you. Thank you so much for reading!

      Like

      Reply

  2. I like the way you turn the photographic concept and turned it into a visceral metaphor for emotional vulnerability and the exhaustion of being ‘seen’ too much, yet understood too little🙌

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. This poem packs a punch, Stew, a gut punch, I think, exposing as it does in the rawness of the landscape the raw vulnerability of opening yourself up to inevitable “overexposure” in a relationship. I admire the way you meld imagery and feeling, balancing one off the other in a way that expands on both. By the time I finished reading your poem, then looked back at the photo, the latter had taken on a new “landscape,” one of the heart.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. I love that you used your photo to springboard into an ekphrastic poem, Stew, and the way you adjusted the exposure to explore not only the photo but also the interior landscape. I especially love these lines:

    ‘Yet when exposed
    The light reveals as much as it takes away
    The details fade but the contrasts shout’

    and the personal experience in these lines:

    ‘So I sit here, among the weeds
    Exposed by your soliloquies
    Lies told and truths unclothed’.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment