We walked along an abandoned rail bed that day, you and I,
worried aloud at what little time was ours for sharing,
talked of family and friends, ten years gone between.
Familiar sand and pine gave way to deep, mud-filled tracks
surrounded by towering trees and vines,
fiddlehead stands, and musty murky swamp,
which you tried to capture with its play of light and dark
reflections in your "just for snapshots" lens.
Even the photographer must take a holiday, you said,
seeing everything in frames and patterns you could not resist.
I watched in quiet surprise as your city-bred composure
slipped away in our prickly, sub-tropical heat;
You slapped and swatted and scratched and swore
at your swollen, mosquito-plagued neck.
You cried out at silken strands that caught upon your face,
sought the culprit who dared to spin such sudden traps,
and turned to mask your fretful frustration
when you could not loose its sticky hold.
A quick glance upward caught giant webs centered
high above our path, marked here and there by
single strands that downward spun just low enough
to catch your much taller frame.
Beware the dreadful banana spider, I cried.
You turned, a momentary dread on your face.
I laughed to think Miss Muffet could survive this encounter
unruffled and unfrighted, while nobel Puss-in-Boots
squirmed in discomfort and dismay.
When at the unexpected end of a bridge you turned
unquestioningly back, I paused to wonder what different
demons you must have conquered in your world
than I have faced in mine.
I wonder, now that you are gone, what your camera saw;
how you remember these things--or if you noted them at all.
My lens recorded these moments so.
In this album lie proofs in print, not Kodachrome detail.
Experience goes that way--a singular version to each belongs,
which, in later telling, may combine real
with should have been. . .
Truth happens only when we read each other;
so hurry back, my friend, hurry back.
