Apertures

Old and blind and in love

with light, he’d reach for

the hands of writers to guide

him back to the landscape,

once the subject of his photo-

graphs. Often he’d see just

how hard it was to render it

right, and would feel free

of such burdens. A last cloud

on a lake he’d let carry him

into night. Breaking sounds

of autumn he’d leave a pond

to compose, rustling the stream

of images. The panicked flight

of the hunted he’d let the dry

grasses capture, their golden

yield his release. Even in

the crimson cusp of an evening

he’d wedge himself, curling

into a ball without twilight

ever sinking him. The man

swam with the fog and its

very touch of resolve. Further

than any writer his shadows

lapped up the sand. All this

in the ebb and flow of a ninth

decade by the tide, an inlet

mapped by its egress to the sky.

And when moonlight would

come to wash his window,

a heavy tome floating lost

worlds on his lap, often

his other hand would read

the apertures of old cameras,

an author’s intent the subject

of his alignments. But when

the milky skies would dip

the hand of a writer in

the milky seas, to the light-

house he’d ascend, dreaming

of being a writer who was

blind, tracing a horizon.