REMBRANDT'S TRIANGLE

Arranging the blaze

is an expression I’ve heard,

that I love. Everything 

we do in life, I believe, 

is an interplay of

shadow and light

on the face of things.

A kind of portraiture 

we fashion, create 

and capture as we go.

Where the light falls

and how it falls,

and how we arrange it all,

in our minds,

and then see it, 

(minds and faces 

are so impressionable)

is, in the end, what life 

actually looks like. 

Rembrandt knew this.

“Life etches itself into our faces

as we grow older, showing 

our violence, excesses 

and kindnesses.”

He said this and painted this.

Photography—which literally means

“drawing with light”—

owes so much to 

his little invention. Without 

it, the inverted triangle, 

placed so surreptitiously

to the side of

another triangle,

the upright pyramid 

of the proboscis, photography 

wouldn’t know what it knows 

as well. This poem is

my way of sniffing 

out answers. It’s a pulling 

together of ideas, vectors 

of thought, a writing 

with light, a blaze 

I'm arranging

down the page.

It is my way of seeing

what's what. Of showing

myself something

I already know I know,

or think I do, 

while picturing, through

subtle affirmation—a quick

touch to the nose-tip—the tell, 

that I am on the right track,

when the truth is

hints and guesses 

are all we really get.

They are all the nose

will ever know.