Today in a Dark Room Today I work in the darkroom alone in the early afternoon. In the outer room the sun sweeps in beneath the blinds casting its happy patterns on the floor and on the sink where I have washed the reels and the tanks after developing a roll of film that waits in the gurgling washer to be hung and dried. I stand in the revolving booth and push so that the door opens on the other side, an underworld with black walls and dim orange lights, strange machines, lakes of chemistry, a place where water is ever flowing. The clock stands still, broken, but I make time exist here, with my wristwatch. Its little hands count the seconds it takes to light a picture into the paper and then for chemicals to make it appear and then to stop its development and fix it on the paper. An hour is a thing unknown here, only something made up of added seconds, as a millennium is comprised of years. The photographs wait upon a rack to dry until they are ready to turn through the revolving door and face a new world of bright lights, staring eyes, exclamations, sighs.