and what if my photos lose
any center of interest
becoming pure tapestry
i want no subjects
i want the impossible world itself
without me in it
after a late hard frost
i want to stroke each velvety leafling
on the mountainside
nothing is realer right now
than this green
i get off my train of thought for it
for an enormous oak with tiny leaves
twirling on their twigs against the clouds
like larval dragons
as the wind turns rainy
as a dog’s tongue
and the green fades with the daylight
i count mountains to fall asleep
leaving room in my dreams
for their lost languages
before the Great Hill People
wiped out the People
of the Blackened Ridge Pole
and Scotsmen came from Ulster
enlarged the void with rifles
and whiskey made from maize
clearcutting and prospecting
shooting the cougars
trapping out the wolves
without whom an alien
far less palatable greenness
spreads over the land like mold
i have been battling it with both hands
pulling out rampant barberry
privet and autumn olive
stopping to listen to new warblers
still flying thousands of miles
just to breed here
that nasal buzz
of a black-throated green
or a black-throated blue
and my camera is only a phone
with so many missing contacts
i hold it up to the sky