Aperture

—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. 

Credit

Copyright © 2025 by Elise Paschen. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“The nature of the writer is to observe the world, remaining at least somewhat detached. This poem, ‘Aperture,’ explores notions of vision. What happens when the writer becomes the object, instead of the subject, of perception? And what happens when, after feeling invisible for many years, the speaker is, in the lens of a movie camera or across the table from someone, suddenly seen? ‘Aperture’ contains a poem within a poem. The line referenced in “𐓡𐓪 ́𐓟𐓤𐓘  /Ho’-e-ga/Snare” (which includes the Osage orthography) reads ‘𐓩𐓣𐓪𐓨𐓘͘𐓜𐓣͘     niu’-mon-bthin [I walk in the water].’ The phonetic spelling is from A Dictionary of the Osage Language by Francis La Flesche.” 
—Elise Paschen