Miniature

A useless art,
yet half the world
has mastered it.

Small plants
to occupy the foreground,
a pine-needle fence.

Bracken uncurls
to a thin tree; a salient
overlooks the world.

She must resist
the urge to place a stone
like a ruin, big as her fist.

Seedheads, a line
of sorrel poplars, where a lake
of mirror shines

in its still place
at the centre – the phoney water
she can fill with her face.