I had just cleared the fourth floor
Confident everyone had made it to the shelter
The steel door closed behind them
When the flash came
Night became a day like no other
Just several seconds long
With the intensity of a hundred suns
When the flash came
I was happy not to be in a doorway
As I watched the paint sizzle
In the nuclear sunlight
When the flash came
I knew I would never reach the shelter
Before the blast came
Ahead of a thousand mile an hour wind
When the flash came
I was already dead
If the coming blast did not level the building
The following wind would
When the flash came
With perhaps a few tens of seconds
To live out an infinitesimal infinity
I waited for the flash to fade
When the red glow came
I walked through the smoking doorway
Out onto the balcony
To marvel at the expanding fireball
Waiting for the blast to come
I marvel at the folly of men
And at the wave of destruction approaching
At a thousand miles an hour
And now the blast comes
I…
Riverview Mental Hospital
Coquitlam
British Columbia, Canada
Taken on location for The Magicians, 2016
I’m calling this series Variations on a Hallway.
This time, with When the Flash Came, it was a bit of both. The idea for the words developed as I was working on creating a washed-out version of the original photograph. So the process of creating an image coincided with the genesis of words and phrases which would form a poem.