LOCAL CONTROL

Anything opaque,
kept moving between source and surface,
may answer to hand.

A card held still betrays its perimeter.
The edge must be feathered.

Here it had been feathered
before there was paper.

One face received a      noon,
its pale register held just short
of paper-white; beyond the moving limit,
exposure accrued without distinction.

DODGE

The hand is smaller than the field.
It circles whatever must retain separation,

the perimeter surviving
by misregistration.

By then, enough tone had survived
for snow to remain material
instead of joining the sheet.

BURN

The sky had required the longer count.

On the unmasked slopes,
the same seconds accumulated incidentally,
until the lower planes entered
a density never asked of them.

What had begun overhead
would have printed
considerably farther down.

FOG

By wash,     had surfaced
inside the image,
without a clean edge by which
its entry could be recovered.