No one in my family is a photographer,
But there they are, at family gatherings, clicking away.
The snapshot is not who I am. I don’t look like that.
I know I’m not that ugly. My head is not that fat.
The photographer, not you, determines how you look,
As if you existed as a character
In someone else’s book.
You look wrong in every photograph,
For that is not what reality is—
A part of a moment in time
Is not real or sublime.
Can you know a song if one note is heard?
Yet, we identify people from photos—
A bad photo of ourselves is absurd.
Vanity, and lack of aesthetics, will doom
The whole enterprise. When we walk into a room
Surprised by a mirror, we could find
That person completely foreign to our mind.
Then if we, vainly, think we look good,
Where does this look exist?
Nothing about the human image is understood.
The good photographer considers everything
Apart from the subject: the lighting, the air,
The way the light lingers in late spring
As it surrounds the subject there.
The photographer can save my life
In a space so small
That I will be a stranger to my wife
And appear to be the most beautiful one of all.
This is all art ought to be:
A small, beautiful falsehood—glowing in mystery.
My daughter, the imp, crept up on me, today, saucy and bold.
She snapped a picture. And suddenly I was old.