THE PHOTOGRAPHER

You are absent

from most of them,

the photos

of me as a child.

It is strange

that only after

your death

do I notice, feel,

your absence

as a presence. The role

of the photographer

is exactly that:

to take and make 
pictures

but not

be in them.

To be there and not

was who you were

in life and it is

who you are now

in death.

The pictures

prove it. They exist

because of you

and yet you are

nowhere to be seen.

Between the adult-me

looking at the images

and the child-me

in them gazing out

is an omniscience

I don't quite understand.

Curious that omnipotent

was the word

you aimed at me

as a boy again and again.

You did so to tell me

how powerful you were,

to put the fear of god

in me, and to make me

behave. Like a camera

that word caught my attention

and held it. The pictures

are your prophecy.

They’re the proof that you are

still watching.