Plate 4.

Bentley stands before you,
unmarried in the night-time

 

forest. He’s pondering
the tripod’s trick geometry,

 

the difficulty of catching
each flake in the smoky

 

flash. Bentley and his
trouble framing each crystal,

 

his frostbit hands
resting on the camera’s cold

 

metal. Bentley
and bachelorhood.

 

Bentley as he tells you
about the faithful of one

 

mountainside church,
how its followers sit outside

 

each snowfall,
believing

 

the words of their Saviour
dwell in each falling

 

crystal. As he takes
your picture you wonder

 

if he invented them
just now, fabricated

 

these followers,
lit candles for them

 

in a church of ice,
but later you find yourself

 

imagining their winter
gardens, carrots and peas

 

in a draughty pantry.
You peek into their stone

 

houses, find men
warming the arthritic

 

hands of their wives,
children gripped by

 

the icicle thoughts
of their sleep. And all

 

around them smokeless
chimneys come up

 

for air in the sky,
each soot mouth

 

open to the moon’s
dark infancy, the moon

 

tucked in its black
flannel bed

 

sheet, the moon rolling over
once in the night.