Kodak
Impossible to mispronounce,
its inventor hoped.
Everyone’s first camera.
Mine a plastic point and shoot—
just drop a film cartridge in,
wind to advance.
Later my first digital, too.
My husband worked for Kodak,
had an employee discount.
He told me of their whole
invented argot, KISL,
Kodak International Service Language,
devised to be devoid
of nuance. One word=
one meaning. Unintentionally comic
but impossible to use for art.
No stony silences. No cloudy thought.
No slippery patinas
of shimmer or rust. Everything
to scale (proportion only, no weight
or fish or climbing allowed).
Even “home” one mere syllable
denuded of detail, fixed in location
and in memory, unabraded;
nothing to develop or discuss.
No backward glances? Even for us
with mountains of photographs
attesting to changes?
No, that is not how I see it.
I cannot concur.
One flat little picture
forgotten for years
reappears quite changed
from what I recall,
with layers of proofs
and dazzling suggestions.
Beckoning insights
explode off the page,
more and more as I age.
The older I get
the more strata I see,
the more I embrace ambiguity.
Leslie Schultz
We are on the same wave length–my second candidate for a title was to write about the Kodiak bears I saw when I was a girl in the Portland zoo!
Always thought KODAK had something to do with Kodiak bears! Can’t explain why I’d think that. So I loved this history, this perspective, the way you documented passing time.
Very helpful feedback. Thank you!!!
Nailed the closure — those last two lines’ sound-meaning-rhythm — the all of it. Congrats.