Poetry
2 min
Frames of Motion
Aashna S.
Swoosh, the doors open.
Swoosh, the doors close.
Swoosh, the doors close.
The moment comes just as soon as it leaves,
I exit a world as soon as I enter.
Off to the next place.
The Bay—
"I'm from the Bay," I say.
I was born here, raised here, will always come back here.
But how well do I know this home of mine?
I must discover it to know it,
I must know it to live it,
I must live it to become one of it.
I should take pictures, I decide.
To observe, collect, process, perfect—
To discover and know the Bay that is mine.
I take the BART from place to place,
Lose track of time as I
Soak it all in
To my camera lens.
I snap photos of
Bright graffiti
And antique houses
And rusted fences
Through dusty glass windows
In the futile attempt to capture a snapshot of time
In a moving reference frame.
I get off in SF—
"The epitome of the Bay," they say.
16th Street Mission—
Its tiled red floors shine in the dim light.
Up and up I climb the stairs
As I ascend into a
World of promise.
Spanish music fills the air,
The smell of smoke mingles with
The sweet scent of rainwater,
Bright Asian fruit stands line
Cracked concrete walls,
Signs remind us
This is Native land.
People and buses and cars and trains are in perpetual motion.
My pictures turn out blurry by necessity—
Such a scene cannot be arrested by
The static lens.
A lens cannot capture
The movement
And energy
And vibrance
Of the Bay.
It cannot show
How voices come together to sing
One beautiful harmony,
How brushes come together to paint
One vivid picture—
Home.
It can only project a moving quantity
Into a static frame,
Can never show us what it took to get here,
What it means that we are here.
I keep searching.
There is still more to know,
Still more to see,
Still more to document.
I stroll through the city
Without a direction.
I walk up and down slopes and valleys,
Hop over unfinished pavement,
Squeeze through crowds of people,
Cross streets without hesitation.
I dance this dance
Until the path transforms into blue
And I can walk no more.
The Bay.
Its majestic posture mesmerizes me,
The waves glisten
As the sun peeks behind the clouds that tease rain.
When I stare hard enough
The gentle waves form patterns,
Become a familiar story,
Trying to tell me something—
Trying to explain how
Motion
And scents
And color
Cannot be captured in a frame,
How to belong to someplace is not to be able to
Capture its prettiest moments
And outsource them to an album
But to hold those dynamic stories
Close to your heart.
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