Imaginary Ansel Adams Yosemite Poem

Now Yosemite

So Ansel, what’s your version of reality?
He smiled at me and said, it’s not so black and white.
The Mercer River ran rapidly before us;
in the distance rose the absolutely sheer
facade of Half Dome like a ghost-blue apparition
in the morning light. Well take Yosemite,
I said. Does all of this, I slowly waved my hand
encompassing the valley and its looming granite
walls, have rock-hard meaning in your estimation?
Everything we comprehend is part of a pattern
we’ve interpreted as something separate, he answered.
Then he took his picture. There it is; it’s hanging
on that wall. I’ve looked at it for fifty years
and every day it seems to be quite different than
the day before. Right now, it looks to be
an emptiness surrounded by a manifest
awareness of our all-encompassing pure love.

~Son Rivers 2009