In Lichen Time

pome anchored in time-lapse photography

Key: As a rule I go lite on explaining poems, however this one will likely leave you in a lurch without a little help. Backstory: I have been playing with time-lapse photography for a decade or more. I like to think of my little time-compressions as four dimensional photographs. One of the challenges in creating a timer-lapse sequence is choosing the right frame rate for the desired effect. It is standard when shooting a normal movie clip for the camera to record thirty frames a second. That means that thirty independent pictures go into each second of your viewing pleasure

Now imagine that instead of taking 30 pictures a second, you took just one picture every second, then played your collected photos back at the rate of 30 pictures a second… Why then, one minute of “real” life would be boiled down into two seconds. Or, using a shooting rate with10 seconds between each frame I can boil down an hour of real life into 12 seconds of playback. Or taking a picture once a minute ... .An hour turns into two seconds etc.


Iti is possible, using my Nikon camera to create time lapse videos in which I set the frame rate anywhere from every half-second, to 8 hours apart! The rationale I use for choosing one rate over another depends on my subject matter, and intended result. I find that gently clouds look pretty neat at a frame rate of seconds apart, while the sun, traipsing across the sky, looks pretty speedy when photographed with a full minute between frames. The sun literally dashes across the frame.

I have yet to take timelapse videos with frame rates longer than a couple of minutes. It might for example, be possible to condense weeks or months or even years into seconds, but it would take leaving a well charged camera in place for weeks or months or years! But this can (and has) been done.

--

Now step to the plate the second influence on my poem. While I have no sound reason for doing so, I figure that a thing (like a lichen) that endures for thousands of years must “experience” time differently than I do. Perhaps, to the long-living lichen or a red-wood tree, a day of my life is more like a minute for them:) Or, conversely, consider a house-fly that lives for just a handful of days. Might it be that my night is more like an arctic winter to the fly? I figure that if you only live a short time, then time runs much slower for you. Again, just a guess. But that's the idea behind this poem.



In Lichen Time

In People-Time
the popcorn boats
flotilla in at lunch, puff about the bay--
We say: “Look at all these mighty clouds,
Where did they come from?”

In Lichen-Time
the clouds explode into being,
right where they are:
Roly-poly cotton candy, fabric in the wind
shape-shifting curdle-wads
turvey dynomite.

In Lichen-Time, times two,
the very air is surging sea
breathing in and out
in and out -- dressed
in flotsam nimbus.
We watch as days roll in like waves
and spangle on the rocks.

In People-Time, the field before our eyes
is wet with dew and statue-still;
The sun gurgles up
like like a big yellow bus, then trudges
overhead, like it has all day.

In Lichen-Time, the sun
sparks Vincent-gold
then motors overhead,
like a jubilant steed -- weeds
un-still like shaking dogs,
waggle, wip and trace
invisible storms.

In Lichen-Time times ten
the sun is a molten tetherball
wrapping for the win.

In Lichen-Time, x twenty-five
the earth is discotheque, strobing night and day.
In LTx42
we no longer see the day or dark
as independent things
any more than we can see
between the blades of a whirling fan.
Everything is umber, under
a gilded arc, a quivering shimmering ring --
Call us citizens of Saturn,

better eyes see abalone
both east and west, even as we sense
a southern shimmy with each flashing winter.

LTx100:
Trees skadoodle up like bean sprouts,
twist and shout,

Collapse.

Cities swell, even as -- ironically
So does the country.

In People-Time we ask:
What will I wear tomorrow?

In Tortoise-Time we ask:
Will Privet take over the world?

In Sequoia-Time we find
Nature favors variation--while
turning beauty-queens to raisins.

In Diamond-Time we watch
people pop, scatter bones with little stones
and nations disappear like smoke.

In Canis-Major Time:
Mankind who?

--

In Jesu time
everything is always
all at once all the time
And everything
of everlasting
beauty

is.