Day Seventeen: "A Most Unusual Camera"

A Most Unusual Camera

There can be no more compelling evidence
that the future is determined. You find
the correct angle and press the shutter button
and in the Polaroid you see what will exist
there soon, and this information is more
than just possible, it is certain, beyond
any questioning, beyond even the thought
that this future could be made anew.
But while of course the selfish people
in the story reap the consequences
of their selfishness, their small crimes,
you have to wonder what could have been
if they had refused what the newly developed
image showed for them, or simply adjusted
the angle, tried again from another direction.
If photography is enclosure, a curated view
of the world that can in turn show us worlds
we could never see otherwise, could it be
possible for future as subject to be likewise
slanted, conditional, open to reframing?