Sepia

Excellent 5+

This is the best poem of yours that I have read. Nothing to add to comments already expressed particularly by the mountaineer.
But I didn't see this as a particular photograph as some did, more a way of looking at the past.more...

*****

Five.

this works so well as a spoken piece. though the title suggests photograph, the words you've used, textured, layering, suggestion of movement, feels more the description of a painting as has already been mentioned. makes me wonder if 'sepia' could refer to a skin colour, a blending of that white authority and the enduring natives left to cope after the cold gray ships have departed.

a pleasure to read such skilful use of language.more...

Really beautiful

You've captured another time and presented it in ghostly wisps. Love how it fades in and out. Very haunting and just slightly spooky.

"A Stroke, Off-White"...

This is very much a painted image, isn't it, Demure? The "mists of time" have white-washed reality, or else it's an old painting, aged by time, and thereby softened. Even with the deliberate word choices that indicate a painful truth, the mists paint over the pain, almost, and allow the strangers to "fade away". As if the artist has painted them out of the picture with "a stroke, off-white"... Very clever, Demure!more...