Alice Fulton: Yours & Mine

Through your lens the sequoia swallowed me

like a dryad. The camera flashed & forgot.

I, on the other hand, must practice my absent-

mindedness, memory being awkward as a touch

that goes unloved. Lately your eyes have shut

down to a shade more durable than skin’s. 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.

It’s a matter of perspective: yours is to love me

from a block away & mine is to praise the grain-

iness that weaves expressively: your face.