Photographing friends in the dark
without flash I see their faces
drift away from their bodies

and rise like planets to catch
whatever stray glints of starlight
filter through the cobwebbed panes.

In this ancient warehouse the smell
of rotting leather and poisoned rat
expresses a nineteenth century

greed for commerce, feeble now
but deeply personal, like footprints
at a murder scene. My friends

have aged in the family business,
which retails linoleum, paint,
wallpaper and power mowers where

year ago barrels of molasses
oozed impossible sweets, and cheese
in fifty-pound wheels lay stacked

like millstones. Too bad I forgot
my flash gun and have to catch
their expressions under pressure,

the dark so absolute the stacked
boxed lawn mowers barely outline
in the glow from the filthy windows.

Still I think I've framed a glimpse
of white hair in my viewfinder,
and I trip the shutter for a long

infra-red time exposure.
When the film's developed perhaps
they'll show up, but most likely

their images will shudder
like shadows cast by Venetian blinds;
and their features will equivocate

and suggest themselves and others
and even the dead who built
and stocked this warehouse, ancestors

still groping to maintain their hold
on the nether slope of the planet
where even starlight rarely shines.