An Artist In Film: Nature Series # 24

for Linda

She faithfully records milkweed
With silver nitrate reactions
On the purest white paper
As silken pods explode in
Chilled near winter
Bursts of wind.

She takes note of footprints
Wild tracks of wild things
As they lead her on trails
Pushed softly down
Into freshly fallen
Clean white snow.

When spring arrives with
Fiddleheads fine pushing up
Through leafy loam she is
There with her close-up
Lens making pictures, lying
Still upon the earth.

And then on a hot summer’s
Day I find her in the nearby
Woods lifting logs, searching
Stumps full of hidden mushrooms.
She is seeing, sensing, snapping
An artist in film, my love.