The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Month: " A Single Photograph"

I came across this untitled poem about six years ago. I loved the line "portrait of the moment". The photo above is one that made me thankful I had a camera with me at the time. This is an image of the inside of the Mission of the Sacred Heart, or Cataldo Mission, a historical landmark in Cataldo, Idaho.


A single photograph

—portrait of the moment—
is an inexhaustible epic,
a living tale beyond words
superior to a hundred volumes
written and fixed. 

A photograph
is consciousness painting,
the instant’s art that opens
on the unbounded vistas
of the inner life. 


-Daisaku Ikeda