Composed on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Cameron comments that this work is both (obviously, as is) a visual poem and, (less obviously) the score for a choral prose reading aloud, in which an alchemical transformation between vegetative and metallic elements is accomplished as we transition from trees (higher voices) to metals (lower) -- and perhaps back up again. It has always struck me that a poet would be as interested in adjacent names (in this case, silver birch and copper beech) as in adjacent trees. If I was reporting a country walk, birch and oak might be the two trees that caught my eye -- but as a poet, birch and beech, with their corresponding metallic adjectives, would be far more resonant. This copy printed 2013 from a computerized version in HTML, late 1990s, after a typed original -- almost impossible to reproduce at this point -- back in the early '80s. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.