In a photograph, my father

I. In a photograph, my father:

skin red from the sun,

his sky-blue shirt

hangs open, his eyes

wide open and calm.

He looks at the camera

like he can see who sees him:

on and on his eyes

on an ocean of time,

the sinking and his sunburnt

lines.

II. A group of kids had found him

for their scavenger hunt:

they laughed and took his picture.

I don’t know --

he doesn’t know, either --

what item they thought him.

He looks through the lens,

like all of us, wondering

how did this happen?

And will the end be just

as surprising?

(Begun 8 June 2005 [!], revised 19 April 2006, revised again on Father's Day 2013. This little ekphrasis really is in response to a photograph, and there really was a scavenger hunt. How a scavenger list predicted or accommodated my father is anyone's guess.)