The prompt challenged me to write a poem using the form and structure demonstrated in Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings.”

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A Star was Born

You smiled when I took your picture yesterday.
I took more of you when you were not looking.
I was pleased when I saw that you were happy.
In one five hundredth of a second, we were looking,
In less than a heartbeat, we had a relationship.
Traditions old; artist, model, relationship.

Then we moved on to live our separate lives.
Well, you did. I took our moment home with me.
Camera to computer your megabytes will stay.
Art’s process to product, about you by me.
We share a vignette of recorded portraiture.
An artful rendering — your beauty in portraiture.

In your life and in mine, nothing much has changed.
Yet there it was. I turned, aimed. You smiled, I pressed.
I took more pictures of happy, smiling faces.
But from this I was happy to write a poem.
Moments of time, frozen forever as subjects.
When the photographer finds some willing subjects.

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Look both ways while roaming with camera in hand, ready to shoot,
to find the exact, perfect second. It eludes many.
Mind the gaps because when you snooze, the moment is gone — forever.