JASMINE DREAME WAGNER

Burtynsky’s Mines

He desired
a discernable vortex,
one perfect circle of sunlight.

Did not witness the dove
as it keeled into the Anaconda pit in Butte;
did witness
the Anaconda pit in Butte.

The angles of the tracks
where the tracks led.

He desired the fact
of dirt, the stasis

of a still filled with grass
like the hair of a Doberman
combed back.  

   After “Mines #43,” a photograph of Berkeley Pit in the Anaconda Copper Mine, Butte,
   Montana, 1985, from a series of photographs by Edward Burtynsky