Shutter Fire

The trail bends
at the lone pine,
and in an instant
the scene gathers itself
in golden light
and you are lost,
till your camera eye finds
the still point
where the frame centers,
where the world turns,
and stars sing in your ears,
and mountains erupt
through the earth's crust,
and snows plunge
in avalanche of white
to bluest lakes
and darkest, deepest caverns,
and your eye pulls the surging edges in,
holds highlights, shadows
in an image throbbing still.
Shutter fires,
and light streaks across the film
in your heart
where you can't see
and you can't know,
yet somehow you hold faith
that exposure is true,
that luck and skill and light
will show your self
radiant,
revealed in luminous
surprise.

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