The Background

The smart eye edits the scene.
Are there garbage cans, buildings,
Power lines, trucks, and wildflowers?

The smart eye selects wildflowers.
The rest of the scene remains
But remains irrelevant.

Or maybe the smart eye likes
Architecture or maybe
Is hoping to buy a truck.

The smart eye selects those things.
You have a smart eye. You have
A smart eye for poetry,

For what you want, which topics,
Which attitudes, points of view.
Pick your foreground, your background.

Do you like a memory,
Some scenery, some trauma,
Some astonishing wordplay?

Sometimes there’s nothing you want,
But you’ll focus just the same
Or turn your smart eye away,

And even if the purplish,
Madly invasive wildflowers
Between the buildings and trucks

Are just what you want to see,
The background always remains,
Blurry irrelevancy.