to hold a photograph in my hand
  and believe what is presented,
  take is at it already is – why not?

if I close my mind’s shuttering eye,
will you be as candid as before?
unrestricted, unsorted from the hullaballoo,

you, freer than what is imagined, closing
in like a bullet from yesterday shot out
of the sky’s contrived clearing –

to hold a photograph in my hand
and tug closer by the mouth of the fringe
as if to pour water on a broken glass,

slithering now, a shadow of moon
at the very dull end of my cup;
you are closer than any rehearsed moment

ready to catch the inner canthus of the eye:
this relentless picture-passing, tense and
fervent, avid like bankiva to air,

water to chrysanthemum: behind thick shrub
of crepuscular, an arboreal locomotion
shatters loose, your frantic figure.

to hold a photograph in my hand
and size it down to the dimensions
of this home – there is potential in this

comparison: flaring out like smoke from
where it infinitely burns, I seek an ache
and hence place a finger to shush,

to hold this photograph in my hand
and confabulate a soft blow to the gut
and feel it realer than any dagger or berretta

held at one’s life-edge: this delusory intimation,
a slipshod work of feeling. to feel it rejoin
me somewhere I ought to be back again.