On Clover

within, within, within
Lubec, Maine

On Clover

“Isn’t it odd how much

more one sees in a photograph

than in real life?

 —VIRGINIA WOOLF

It’s not far off at all and maybe only a change

in temperature and then only maybe a degree

to see in the fog coming up over the hill a long roll

of smoke—wet as it is we can only stand it

still the way anything can be stood still and even

that, the blur of the unsteady hand aiming

the camera is translated in the liquid bath

of the chemicals she’d mix when figuring: I saw

a house on fire once and somewhere inside

the flames themselves were born and borne

by everything it and the wind wanted, and it

was a lie to say it wasn’t the most awakened

lover, how it rippled and let the tongue and finger

linger on the brocade, on the chenille, how

the smoke of it would offer (don’t be coy

or too afraid) to take the children down easy

before the fire arrived.  Maybe she thought

that in her dark room, and the bottles blue

and clear emulsives she tipped into her trays

with these glass negatives wouldn’t betray a thing

about what she knew: it wasn’t the fog that got

her out of bed and walking up the hills

everyday, it was the skeleton she saw, still

whispering with smoke, of the house and all

that was of it: one chimney, and, miraculously,

a chair, cane-seated, next to the fireplace

black and agog as that snake rising against

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, or how it waited in state

like any important official, made up but empty

of his main appeal.  She got up the hill to

see it and stand not wanting the smoke

to clear at all but to stay, to obscure her

while she bent beneath her black hood

and took the lens-cap off and because her

tri-pod was already steady, lean back and pull

the cloth taut so all her dark was under her, so

when she went into the room to mix

her liquids the picture of it would float speckless to

the top.  Fog or smoke, it didn’t matter,

empty chair and fireplace, it didn’t matter,

who could tell would have been there

and they would’ve felt the fire or smelt

the salt or the smoke.  Either way, they were

done for, they laid down in it looking,

mesmerized, ravished, stopped in time.

She saw to that did Clover Adams.