For instance, here—in etching and collagraph—

a nocturnal scene we crave yet seldom find.

This tree lacks obvious roots and thus absolves

itself from all responsibility

for drawing water from the nearby lake

serene enough to chart the dithered path

of an off-stage moon. A stucco house affirms

this moon, the lakeward wall awash in light

launched from a point of faith beyond the frame.

We sense the etching’s parenthetical

to our desire to know the moon exists

beyond our view—as do all absent fowl—

goatsuckers, frogmouths, oilbirds. For their sake

the imagination freckles the fancied moon’s

wan face with pointillist specks to stand for gnats

whose whine of "take me now!" our birds oblige.

How quick the mind is to clutter when it needs

to purge the glut of detail. If this lake

is not responsible for the thirst of trees,

who themselves refuse to form a plan for roots,

surely we’re freed from guilt for appetites

of birds who wait unbidden in the wings

to indulge the hankering imagination?

We yield from hunger to temptations art

allows us. This is your cautionary tale.