Seeing My Wife at the Whitney

Again I'm loving what I can not see, beating
my heart against it, the black thirds

of Steichen's early landscapes,
silver all-the-way dark and the shapes above --

tree-limbs, voluptuous clouds, rocks like minor gods --
reflected in each pool of blackness.

I'm working my gaze into platinum, silver,
into gum bichromate, direct carbon

prints which ache and ache me. My wife
is the sky when her face opens up. The clouds

are intricate mountains making and un-making themselves.
My wife is a sharp tack vibrating on the floor of my brain.

A woman whose hair suddenly glistens
waits for me to move so she will not break

my gaze, seeking shapes in murmuring crystals
of platinum, layered dark ground and boundless.