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His Dead Father's Camera |
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The photographs that Peter took in Utica, using his dead father's camera: The elevator buttons in Utica Municipal Housing for the Elderly, each button a milky gray, like a blind eye -- except for eleven, which is lit up in gold. The linoleum, mint green with a long black streak, the scuff of a rubber heel or a walker. His grandmother in profile, where she sits in the passenger seat, pointing at the road with a bony and articulate finger. Behind her white puff of hair are two telephone wires, one mountain. There is the football field, or rather, a yellow goalpost, opening into the empty sky. There is my shoulder, as I turn towards the parking lot, and the bright blur of my hair. It whirls in front of my face, as if I have just jerked my head away from him.
There is the corrugated surface of an oak tree, where a dark mushroom blooms.
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1996 © 2011 |
It may or may not be the tree beneath which his grandmother's dog is buried.
It may or may not be in the graveyard, where she keeps searching for her son.