The View from Here

I should begin with a few things I am:a boy from a water-stained river town,a photographer of tonight's evening light,a sweet corn shoot at the end of July.

Good God: the shape of things to comeseems like a mass of grief growinginside the Berkshire cabin my father sold.His sister, who I've never met, wroteon our photo, He's not as skinny as you were.

And then, I held you as you slept;for whatever reason, it felt sweetly lonely.

However, I do think the best days are over,but I saw them in my father's reactionto seeing the housing project he grew up inin the Bronx, on Google Street View.How he touched my shoulder, leaning over me,saying, Can you go down the street with it?

First, we went to the corner storewhere he bought chocolate for a nickeland then to his grade school, P.S. 41—now razed and under construction—and finallyto the house that belonged to the first girl he kissed.That one upstairs was her window.

How excited he got that where he came from was stillall those miles away, from the dock where he feedsthe fish and geese in the evenings. Beneath pink-gray clouds,I took a photo of him with one arm wide,twenty ripples on the water from the fish food—some weeks don't make sense. But they know beauty.