for Tim on his birthday
I.
in this moment, captured
there is you, unguarded—
your shape echoed in round, sleek curves
—a slick, still back
pliable, formable
like soft summer cumulous:
this one a ship, that one a camera.
eyes that don’t exist
tucked away
inside a square black box
you have no need to think outside of.
yet, you see,
you coax.
the light flooding like wetness itself
this one torrential, that one a pattering.
II.
you caress that light
until black blushes gray
then tan, then a pure blinding white
that erases your outline—
your heavy black outline
the one drawn in experience,
the one of protection,
a witching circle.
you are comfortable
in that outline.
III.
you are comfortable,
but you dream.
we all do.
IV.
you are here, too—
in the blazing white,
in the balance,
in the sensuality,
in the loneliness,
in the flat, open prairie
of the glassless frame.
it’s beautiful—all of it—
and so are you.
now own it.
V.
like Stieglitz, you hide
behind another color—
his the blazing pastels of Georgia,
yours the green-gray
of a necessary salary.
I’d like you to have more funk,
I tell you when you ask
about your own Georgia,
your personal artistic license.
more social consciousness,
less ass consciousness.
smart. funny. a good partner who makes
good financial decisions.
someone who will stand up to you
when you’re being an ass
and/or just plain mad—
no muffin-baking diffusers
please.
a direct woman. an honest woman.
a woman who will walk
around the lawn barefoot,
even in the winter.
someone who is a good foil
for your formidable personality.
someone who looks up
from that walk around the lawn
and sees you, hiding,
in the clouds and thinks, as Chaucer did:
Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vecu pres d’elle.
——————
Trans. Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vecu pres d’elle: I am not the rose, but I have lived near the rose. (The Romaunt of the Rose, Chaucer.)