Time Lapse
David B. Prather

—after Number 32 by Jackson Pollock

Even Rorschach would have been flummoxed,
              all these inky spatters and wisps
on a field of beige. He might have imagined
              the silhouettes a swarm of sprites
in a summer-flaxen meadow. There’s a possibility
              he might have construed this
scattering as a fluther of jellyfish, their spasm
              dance in murky sea water.
Have you ever seen a picture of Hermann

              Rorschach? He was a beautiful man
with a visage similar to Brad Pitt’s, a symbol,
              himself, of desire. Which is what
I see in this pattern of abandon, a frenzy
              that won’t be quelled. Or the lingering
trails of fireflies in a time-lapse photograph,
              only in negative, light and dark
reversed. There’s a black and white picture
              of the psychoanalyst with his children:

He and the younger child look down, shadows
              weeping upon their cheeks,
while the eldest child looks painfully
              toward the camera, toward us
even all these years later, as though the future
              were a place of mourning and grief.
And here we are, in the turmoil of this moment,
              the splatter and spray of a tempest
dashed upon a window, the light incandescent.

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David B. Prather’s Comments

I was struck by a side-by-side photographic comparison of Hermann Rorschach and Brad Pitt. I also happened upon a photo of Rorschach and his two children, one of whom was starting intently at the camera, while Rorschach and the other child were looking elsewhere. My meditation upon these images might very well be a sort of inkblot test, sharing what I see in simple photos.

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