Who snapped this ending,
right arm hung on a barbed fence,
the left dangling above the spring ground.
His hat is yards behind him,
its disturbed edges like ribbons.
Somewhere his mind slipped...
cabin fever made him venture into snow
a season back, mugged bootprints
in a derelict trek where a girl's face
melted and became the sting of winter.
But this is not winter.
The picture holds no season: black and white.
Someone clicked this man's
final act-- the pose
preserved by an Oklahoma blizzard:
a fence, a hat, a roar of field.
What the photo cannot catch
is the wind walking the hat
from his slumped head.
The snow's slow yield into sod.
|