MY PHANTOM GALLERIES

By Joseph Jae Adams

I close my eyes

and the shutter falls—

a silent click within the dark

that captures beauty pure and stark.

No lens, no light, no silver plate;

only my heart’s own aperture

opens wide to drink the world

and fix it there forevermore.

When I lift my lids again,

the scene burns deeper than the sun—

a lifelong print upon my soul,

etched in blood and breath and bone.

I carry Heron’s rock-ledged isles,

where blue herons cradle the sky in wings;

the Chrysler’s silver spire piercing clouds;

Grand Canyon’s rim where earth splits open wide.

San Francisco Bay glitters beneath the Gate’s red arch;

Manhattan rises sharp from Brooklyn’s bridge-born gaze;

Eiffel’s iron lace against a Paris dusk;

our stone house dreaming in the Vendée’s quiet green.

The neighbor’s wine cave breathes its cool, dark secret;

our farm’s green fields hold horses like slow clouds;

the garden’s tender riot of color and scent;

Amish blades flashing gold through standing wheat.

Cochise’s stronghold guards the desert’s ancient fire;

Jimmy Stewart’s footprints wait in concrete time;

whales breach in Kauai’s turquoise thunder;

and Dad—smiling through the classroom door

for my fourth-grade Christmas song.

These are not photographs that fade.

They live behind my eyes,

breathing with every beat of heart,

singing in every hush of soul—

forever framed, forever mine.