Desire Path: Sequoia

Today I see the appearances no matter what:

the trees across the street, the fogs

in Ansel Adams' The Splendid Entrance

Preceding the Augmentation, San Francisco,

California. In the picture, I'm not embracing

the sequoia; I'm showing the woman

behind the camera I'm pretty much nothing, young,

that I've always been powerless

to fire, and I'm smiling to know this.

I'm holding my arms inverse

to the plane of my body, which is equivalent

to the plane of the tree, the tree

between my arms, outstretched,

likewise, thusly I'm offering to the woman

behind the camera: You likewise are pretty much nothing, energetic,

you have everlastingly been unprotected against fire.

In snapping the photograph, she says: I agree.

You are nearly nothing. The picture is on a screen

in a housing. The woman behind the camera

a deception of memory, her face smeared,

free. There is happiness in planes

gone to buildup, in time (in like manner with water, similarly with wind)

approaching its sedimentary obligations. Please

from a long time prior — the impression of the tree's

disagreeable bark, its trunk as sum

between my arms as the Splendid Entryway,

through either projection, running

into ocean under only one horizon —

euphoria in not knowing (fire, steel,

trouble) what's coming.