Pretty

I don’t do pretty.
I do real, which is not to say
that pretty is unreal: instead I mean to say

that pretty is as pretty is
and so is ugly, and so is
nondescript, which is what
I most like to describe

and what most catches my eye:

the random and completely
featureless (to our esthetic)
nature of All Nature, including

the artificial one we have made
while preferring to forget that a skyscraper
and a road scraper are as much natural phenomena
as any beaver dam or ant hill:

unimaginable to the blissful photographer
who maneuvers that camera of hers
so carefully to avoid

the wrapper in the foreground,
the rapper in the background:

all that is as meaningful
as any bloom, and negation of the whole

is ugly, which I see is real,
which I see is not pretty by definition
but which must be told.