Recycling Silver

Historically
images were produced
with the help of silver salts

The film is burned
The ash melted

Or torn to bits 
and steeped
in acids

Body as land
Surveyable

Riddled with disease
Veined with
tributaries

Tribute as payment 
made by one body
or one nation to another 
                in submission

For instance
the US Asiatic Squadron
overcoming the Spanish
Pacific Fleet as the Bay
foamed with smoke
and gunpowder 

The sum
of twenty million

The price
of occupation

Even then
to ford the first of many
waterways was to come
under scrutiny
          
As children 
we imagined clear
air poured like milk into
                the upside-down bronchial trees

What birds trembled
the leaflets of their wings there
waiting to be read like a book

Trachoma
Tuberculosis 
Rheumatic fevers
Ringworm
Asymmetries 
Deformities
and other 
                signs of contagion

And so the first of anyone  
I knew who crossed the ocean
did so clutching an X-ray film 
of their lungs as they climbed 
into the plane

After the ribcage
and the spine and the system
of smaller bones is archived
something pure 
like silver might still 
be recovered

It washes

It's a wash

Which in current usage
means a situation in which 
overall no real loss 
is considered to have 
occurred