Camera Eulogia

Herodotus says the king made a bowl to leave behind

the memory of a number. We don’t know the number.

We don’t know if it was divisible by two or three.

I want, at the moment, the number to indicate

a ratio, part of a proportion, because the measurement

of the earth depends on this, the balance among things,

the snow at the bottom of the hill, the gold garage light

caged in a tree, my love for my friend and the distance

between us, which I can’t bear.

I made a pinhole camera to demonstrate proportion,

and everything bright hovers on its milky eye,

and here is the catalogue of what hovers there

smaller than itself: the blue horizon and the dash

at the stoplight, a shell night-light, the gazing ball

of the sun going down against the white back fence,

which made it look like night in the woods lit

from underneath on the wax. I held these things

yesterday, along with two pearls that are spheres

hanging from my living room ceiling.

My friend is smaller now, and if I held my camera up

to her, she would give off enough light to hover

pocket-sized in my hand, and grand in the world.