FRIDAY NIGHT SPECIAL: A POEM BY William Reichard

First Photograph of a Snowflake by William Reichard

Wilson Alwyn Bentley, Circa 1910 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

​Their chief property: impermanence. 
What one discovers must be 
quickly preserved.

The chief challenges: scale and speed. 
How to capture a single flake, magnify 
it hundreds of times, be certain that

the intact image is burned onto 
the large glass negative, all accomplished 
in the dark of the blackout hood. 

The primary goal: to create an image 
clean and clear, free of motion when, 
by nature, the flake is only motion.

He tries it hundreds of times, 
the microscope, the camera, 
the hot keg lights blasting hard. 

Finally, the contradictions hold 
and the ephemeral is captured. 
When he makes a positive and drops

the paper into the developer, 
he watches as winter itself emerges, 
intricate and perfect.

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William Reichard is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, Two Men Rowing Madly Toward Infinity (Broadstone Books, 2016). He is the editor of American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice (New Village Press, 2011) an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays addressing social justice issues. He lives in Saint Paul, MN.