a photograph of tree limbs

scrawny limbs float below the surface, reflections

in an oily mass of decomposition defining autumn and somehow

Atget got it and also that such a sight belies separation

between above and below, twinning itself so we can get it—

whatever line exists between them negligible,

frozen and might crack if one were to probe, yet

the flat surface of a photograph is impenetrable,

locked but for thinking that carries us into it

as I must think before one foot sets down in front of another,

one a complete spasm, nerve damage, the doctor said

as the branches in water fade or the lens fails to focus in

on each twig dripping itself below the surface

and lifting up again as our eyes follow what’s been given

long before we arrived there looking at a reflection in the pond

another shore

a slight wind moves the invasive beachgrass, suspends the urge

to wrest them from the sand as the wind blows evenly to stir

each blade in the direction of the sea, I think of the action involved,

not the grass itself, separating one from the other’s an act of will

arising from tactility and the willingness to stand and stare

at the incremental shifts in his black and white photograph

where grays predominate, where a mid-range wind and palette

damp down the stringencies of an interior I carry onto the beach

most intimately remembered in photographs from another shore

cursives

meditation pulls the wave into a shapely curve

in a photograph of the Oregon coast,

in the insistent horizon line as if one had closed eyes

to capture the unseen but vivid repeat

of what rhythm the ocean pulses across the page,

what breaks at the shoreline, whitens a diagonal,

the formal archetypes clamping down

no matter how wild a scene, how rampant

the ensuing waves, I close eyes on an oval

of light-colored arcs meeting at the edges,

put my hand in water cold as the month it is,

every backwash churning pebbles smooth

in one’s fingers, defining first and thumb

not as digits, but as cursives for nowhere & none

on the page

distance has overtaken, we’re apart as we’ve always been,
but I could slam into it now, plywood sheeting in diagonals
north south east west & a window is no window but an old
building I looked into in New Haven, a man in his tallit
never moving his body, bent over texts framed in a brick frame,

there’s a slight sway in a slight wind, still everything
out any window seems still as the distance between us, infuses
all the bay water with a steely sheen, the flight of birds frozen
in the white sky two days ago, distance palpable as cutting
in two
only on the page is there semblance of lessening, yet
all efforts to reach out seem as the poem she copied in a letter,
so faint, hard to read, lines slanted in illegible ink