Will you fix the distance for me?
Hold it down with a horse and rider.
They appear to know where they’re going.
Or the dust plume of a pickup truck,
a dilapidated building,
a fenced graveyard, the gate unhinged.

I desperately need a foreground.
Perhaps you could stand
about, say, fifty feet from me,
angled toward
away.
Truthfully, it doesn’t matter.
I know affection from proximity.
Just stay there, please.

Otherwise, I spend days staring
at the blue-gray haze
of the Independence Range.
The vague light, way too vague,
keeps me from my work.

February, l997