Some dreamily smoke cigarettes, some track

toddlers who walk like drunks. Buzzy,

the picnic grounds, noisy, sun-crazed, how

forks and spoons don’t exactly lie flat.

A mountain’s here, a famous overlook

from which you’d see none of this. Like that

first daguerreotype, its moving carriages

and those who strolled never picked up

in the long exposure, a Paris street emptied

by the camera, only houses and lamp posts

gone eternal. Or the one who stopped

for a shoe shine, the one who knelt to the task.

At the picnic—a commotion. A large man

to a younger man. I don’t know you! he’s hugging

and laughing. I don’t know who you are,

he shouts over and over a stillness so immense.