Look at these old photos of ourselves, What airs we struck, our stares We do have a mixed history Juste last week in the Eastern Townships \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>*<\/p>\n Not all readers will recall film, the kind used in cameras, let alone that Plus-X was an medium speed black-and-white emulsion. The backstory need not be told, though it might help to know the settings. The first was Grenoble, in the French Alps, 1966. The second, twelve years later, when this was written, on the shores of Lake Massawipi, in the Eastern Townships of Qu\u00e9bec.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Look at these old photos of ourselves, so pretentiously posed with an eye to a posterity we turned out to become. I wonder who we thought was watching, for whom we captureds in chemicals and light these thin seductive replica of selves got up in the relics of the existential France where I learned from … <\/p>\n
\nso pretentiously posed with an eye
\nto a posterity we turned out to become.
\nI wonder who we thought was watching,
\nfor whom we captureds in chemicals
\nand light these thin seductive replica
\nof selves got up in the relics
\n<\/span>of the existential France where
\nI learned from you about eating out.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>fixed through swirls of Gauloises
\n<\/span>smoke at a bookish void.
\nYou went braless, I bared my chest.
\nWe affected quite wicked looks
\nwhich but belied our early gropes
\nat matching blurry kiss to kiss,
\nthe sweet sequence of surprise
\nas breasts first grazed breasts
\nand limbs learnt to entwine.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>of emulsions, viewfinders, f-stops.
\nDo you remember leaving tracks in frost<\/span>
\non bridges and berges<\/i> as we postured
\n<\/span>before the dramatic sites of the lesser Alps?
\nYou wore bohemian coffee-house black,
\na silk scarf at your silken throat.
\nBut we never loaded film
\n<\/span>and a whole roll of come hither
\n<\/span>glances and philosophical smilles
\n<\/span>vanished with those shutter clicks.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>of Qu\u00e9bec, the leaves ablaze and eery
\n<\/span>as negatives of summer Kodacolor prints,
\n<\/span>we were stuck with Plus-X. There we were,
\n<\/span>the autumn at its prime, orange and scarlet
\n<\/span>drifts of crazy snow lining the muddy
\n<\/span>backroads where we paused to kiss,
\n<\/span>fuller more practiced bodies,
\n<\/span>snapping shots in black-and-white.<\/p>\n