Reflections upon gazing at a photograph of the writer, sculptor and poet, Clark Ashton Smith, taken circa 1960
Across the trans-galactic hold
Spins light-less star, a home
To deities from worlds grown cold,
And there his name is known!
He sits in studied silence,
In the photograph,
Not like a man, but half in shadow,
Like an apparition floating in the chair.
On the table in his sight
Rests a manuscript, a pen,
And his cigarettes are there.
What look; what piercing gaze!
Perhaps 'tis I am in a photograph,
And it's he who gazes on, the Sorcerer---
Who calls me through the air!