Crop
Cropping the image I see how sparse
the yield this year of further wearing—
I find my way there by fewer paths
but know those fewer paths more intensely,
the bits I have lost are not lost
to the greater picture, and when I saw
it closely, obscurely, or in panorama,
I could see what would be hidden from me.
A wasp’s single mud cell, the crumpled body
of a window spider tapping beneath its tube of silk,
a single buck rabbit’s scats mixed with a kangaroo-
and-its-just-out-of-the-pouch-joey’s scats,
the deep summer sun saying rust on a corrugated iron sheet
that has lost its sheen and seems to be reddening,
soon all cropped out of recollection, in themselves
the sharp glass stubble fields most questions.
What have you been watching, reading or wearing
to say that the collars of dry, dead wild oats
around the base of trees are ruffs? Each circlet
is a different condition, is worth at least
a different description, so many insects around
them all? But cropping is an editorial function—
a cutting the world to shape, to suit,
a vision splendid, or an economy of sight.
