Poem-a-Day

^{—while being filmed on the North Pond} 

Looking through the lens for a close-up, 
he frames me, pond in the background. 

         I glimpse a red-winged blackbird light 
         above a cattail tuft. The filmmaker 

instructs, “Edge left, inside the shot.” 
How different to be watched (like last night 
  
         across the linen table from you, 
         to be seen, as if for the first time, 

and then to dip into the gleam 
of an ocean, your open gaze). 

         I long, instead, to cup the water 
         music, rising blackbird notes, mid-air. 

“Camera rolling,” he says. Lake-gusts 
sweep hair strands across my face. 

         “Please read your poem,  Ho’-e-ga/ 
         Snare, where you walk into the water.” 

Behind our shoot, a bus brakes, whooshes. 
A loud announcement. Filming’s cut. 

         I catch, between the reeds, the white-ringed 
         eye of the wood duck. Fledglings scoot. 

Further down the path, on rocks, a man proposes. 
While she accepts, a photographer snaps.