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Taylor Leedahl photo

 

Photograph

You did not know I had taken it,
master of the one-armed side-shot I've become.

                          You were so reverent
on our rock-blistered ramble, hillside sharing
of mule deer, your friends
                    the red-tailed hawks.

And a teepee ring.

And your favourite fallen aspen
in the thicket. White it was, at one end seething
with ants. You excel
                             at the surreptitious.

I could not stop needing
to feel the callus of lichen
on stones, purple and orange, like starfish,

     a strawberry birthmark
on the cheek of a girl you adored.

What the camera wouldn't memorize.

                           Below us, town
a table spread for a picnic, potato salad,
and every countenance
                I've ever known.

Bird trill. Small feet
learning the mechanics of bike pedals
and flight. Postures on the corner
near the post office, across from a sign
for soft ice cream. The slow snow
of cotton. Nothing moved quickly
                                   or rose above
a mower's mellifluous hum, the maternal shush
of river beneath the arched bridge
where I have stood too long growing older
            and knowing ever less.

We both see where I'm headed
in this photo—furrowing eyes, neck pleats—
but it's more than the skin's undoing. I'm in love with

the welt of sun on the back of your hand,
the frayed collar, the vague shape of Italy
between profiles.

                     Behind us, sky
the blue of a newborn's fingernail.
Buffalo wallows.

In the wind-sweep of grass, yellow wildflowers
attempt to compose themselves
          and burn
                     low to the ground.

It could have been a blur.
                          I might have missed
the fraction of the moment that mattered most.

Sometimes I stumbled. You, occasionally, ran.

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