Desire Path: Sequoia

Today I see the countenances in all things:

the trees across the road, the mists

in Ansel Adams' The Brilliant Door

Prior to the Scaffold, San Francisco,

California. In the image, I'm not embracing

the sequoia; I'm showing the lady

behind the camera I'm little, youthful,

that I've forever been powerless

to fire, and I'm grinning to know this.

I'm holding my arms opposite

to the plane of my body, which is equal

to the plane of the tree, the tree

between my arms, outstretched,

also, in this manner I'm sharing with the lady

behind the camera: You also are little, youthful,

you have forever been helpless against fire.

In snapping the photo, she says: I concur.

You are little. The image is on a screen

in a lodging. The lady behind the camera

a fabrication of memory, her face smirched,

loose. There is joy in planes

gone to residue, in time (likewise with water, likewise with wind)

taking care of its sedimentary responsibilities. Joy

from before — the sensation of the tree's

unpleasant bark, its trunk as entirety

between my arms as the Brilliant Door,

through one or the other promontory, running

into sea under only one skyline —

delight in not knowing (fire, steel,

misery) what's on the way.