Yours & Mine
By Alice Fulton
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.
Alice Fulton, “Yours & Mine” from Dance Script with Electric Ballerina. Copyright © 1983 by Alice Fulton. Reprinted with the permission of University of Illinois Press.
Source:
Dance Script with Electric Ballerina
(University of Illinois Press, 1983)
