on Eadweard Muybridge

Those poor hostages, trapped in their sequential cells;

forced to walk or run, to climb, to sit then stand,

stand then sit. How miserable the captive animal is,

worried away—till they lose hair, presence, weight—

with the fret of knowing they are being watched.

Their every moving part dissected. It seems a wonder

anyone does anything. Reduced to one action the body

strains to bend and lift, to step from the frame.

Beyond the frame: the black that is non-happening.

Deep as a canyon, what it is between. A space

with the capacity of sleep, the near darkness of a blink.

Barely noticed and then dismissed. The moment

is neither metrical nor imperial, neither ends nor begins.

Each step's a crime: the before and after and frontier within.