The poet/photographer finds a subject in an unlikely place

After we crept to the bird wall
poked our lenses through portals
and stole the souls of wrens
after we snapped the snapping turtles
their necks stretched high and frozen
as if sniffing the sun or posing
after we climbed the viewing stand
and shot the field of mounds
the red-banked stream, the tangles
and brambles and dun of dead grass
after receiving the scorn of squirrels
and following our bread
crumbs back to the lot
only then did we find our art,
a blanched dead log of elm
stripped of bark to bare its canvas
proud of the waves in its wood
fine grooves engraved like flowing hair
an imagined face, obsidian eye
streaked with ochre by the Lord.