Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 32.2
Display Copy
Peter Campion
Down on their towels, stoned, the couple stares
toward light of the year and month I was born.
Horny, or existentially forlorn:
tough to tell. Their faces soak the glare
off dunes behind them, so whatever look
they're wearing bleaches out.
But neither blinks.
And four blue eyes when the shutter clicks
show clear as water pooling in a brook
while land and sky blot white.
The shading gives
the feeling that they're utterly withdrawn
from where they are. But the town name's printed on
the bottom: part of my family still lives
and two are buried there.
It must be
one of those beaches my mother took me to:
leading up splintered walks until the view
opened below.
Wide span of lavender sea.
And always those casual emergencies
of families, kids scrambling round the chairs
with their pails. And always someone's covert stares
(like this couple's) from the bleached peripheries.
Most of these photo art books on display
hide public secrets. Men in chaps who tie
each other down. One woman's blood rimmed eye.
The stitchwork on the bindings starts to fray
from all the handling.
Glancing round the store
then back, I skimmed until I found this shot.
It's not like transport in some cloudbanked thought.
It's just the fact of them and nothing more.
The fact is like a shock.
They're in that time and place
and staring out at me. The sweeping sand
is so immaculate that their figures stand
out strangely. They are the shapes that they erase.
No way of knowing if they're still alive.
Or where they live. Or who they have become.
The aisles are crowded now. Voices thrum
from the stairwell. People leave, arrive
and leave again.
Their passing faces glint
in high res from the rush of surfaces
then flow back into it. That's how it is:
they flow back into it, and then they don't.
