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