Different rules

Take nothing but photographs, the sign says

so the strange miracle of the tree’s coaxed

into the camera, the weird, gaunt knots

an odd angle of branch in desert haze

defying understanding. Things will grow

in their rightful places, and photographs

will fade of course, and days, and words, and maps,

not every poem leaves an afterglow -

transience and change, and a certain heave

at turns, the conflict of balance, and light.

Will it be enough - this capture of roadside? -

this effort to take nothing, quietly leave.

The window quickly reconfigures the sky.

The rules are different for passers-by.

I've been looking at old photographs, lots and lots of them., and one of them made it to this poem here.