We get to be the hangouts and the hot spots on the blouse

Of a woman whose legs slant toward eternity. We get to be

The woman as her shoes make a song on the pavement

As well as the whole day bending down to listen, the skyline,

The front yard and riverfront windows, the gloved or manicured

Hands, every manner of cure for what ails the interior. We get to be

The vessels of duration and feasible profit, and the men building

A roost of coins and prospects out of ingots, ignitions, slabs

And sheets of metal reflecting vibrant broken colors. We get to be

All that, Brothers and Sisters, when we lie back and let the agent

Of beauty lay hands on us. What if, in your previous life,

You were born a black man’s camera? Suppose you lived

As something filled with a light and darkness that’s defined

By what it touches. What if you could hold everything

You behold in a chamber inside yourself: a sense of the existential,

A sense that color sometimes conspires against you, a sense

There are people who would be anonymous without you?

*

You are an instrument of visible music, Camera, a focused mind

In love with witness. We look at you looking at us grinning ear to ear

Some afternoon as the light hangs on us like jewelry. We can be

The woman waiting to have your lens cover her body like praise

Poured to preserve the loveliness others have tried to erase

As well as the young men who sigh Amen, Good God, Goddamn

Beholding her. We live so lively in you, Camera. Even the furniture

Misses us when we’re gone. When only the satin and stains

And dark shot glasses remain, Camera, you help us feel

A little less empty. You make me feel a bit less blue, Camera,

You do. We slide into your suit and move on down the avenue.

Because everyone and everything is a self-portrait, we get to be

The upturned salutes, the bouquets at rest, the expressions

That evaporate sadness, the punctuating rain, the clouded

Judgments and clouded air suffocating the city, we get to be

The flame in a black man’s hands, thanks to you. Drawn

To illumination and to the darkest basements too, we slide

Across the floorboards with our legs kicked up, we slide

Across the troubled waters like dancers in a blues ballet,

Slide into tomorrow where no one expires

Because there is no time to lose. The scars we cover

In ornaments and rouge you uncover, the youth we lose

You make permanent. Camera, you really have to love us

To keep us from disappearing. Bodies of solar-powered soul,

Most of what we know of the past we know because of you.

We get to be any brother in gold worn to blind a gaze with no heart

In it. Mistranslations, obfuscations, combustible insults,

Sideways assaults. Hold us, Camera, until we are not as black

As what they called us before they called us what they call us now: