Cape Canaveral with Fades and Spots

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

What use are snapshots if they have no names

Or words attached to them as .  .  . years .  .  . go by

As merciless as cheetahs with their aims

Of racing teeth?  The antelopes must die

Along with people in the photographs

Who die a doubled death when they can not

Have names restored?  These folks are like giraffes

With necks and legs torn off, with only spot

And spot and faded fur to tell us who

They were, no names or dates or words to tell

Us even where the snaps were made.  Who knew

And loved these people?  They have gone to hell.

  There lost within their hell, forgotten, these

    Condemned ones languish with their silent pleas.

©  Phillip Whidden

Phillip and Donald Whidden on Cape Canaveral

The poet took this photo below in the first hours of his first safari (in Kenya).  The cheetah (so far as Whidden knows) did not have a name.