Yours & Mine

BY

ALICE FULTON

Through your lens the sequoia swallowed me

like a dryad. The camera flashed & forgot.
I, on the other hand, must practice my absentmindedness, memory being awkward as a touch
that goes unloved. Lately your eyes have shut
down to a shade more durable than skins. I know you
love distance, how it smooths. You choose an aerial view,
the city angled to abstraction, while I go for the close
exposures: poorly-mounted countenances along Broadway,
the pigweed cracking each hardscrabble backlot.
Its a matter of perspective: yours is to love me
from a block away & mine is to praise the graininess that weaves expressively: your face.