MY FATHER'S GRADUATION PORTRAIT your youth faded far more swiftly than this image of it whose smile still leans out into the world and whose eyes though they have never seen anything seem to touch everything the image fades only slowly and retains to the last its initial form and then? it is nothing it has done nothing but hang on to a trivial moment of your life when the photographer called for your attention and a smile this image is nothing and engendered nothing because it did not depend on the continuance of a heartbeat it only needed itself and some stiff paper and therefore it outlasted you and came into these days of mine which are almost as many as you ever had came into these days and before my eyes which really look really see not like those eyes of the image dead from the moment the shutter closed