Snap
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In a photograph of myself I am surrounded
by objects I never noticed when I was there—
the immediate! Who knew its expansive detail?
The walnut tree casting its pinnate shadows,
the variegated lawn—the next-door neighbor’s
house with its classical portico, its peeled siding.
When I was there I held too many motives
to notice the shrub that now looks so poignant
back-lit in the long light of evening.
Out of the head’s dim portals—
echoing night and day
with the talking-drums of the ego—
out of that rhythm, the self sees it was only
a socialist-realist monument in a summer hat,
a pastiche of surfaces. And it will survive
in a dozen photographs, where every stone
is motionless as a sparrow.