Timing

Fiddling with his camera

setting aperture and speed

aligning the cross hairs again

and yet again

He always took too long

to snap the shutter

so his photographs

were always slightly after the fact.

The girl’s face just turned away

to watch doves rise up from the square.

The candles already smoking

on his mother’s last cake.

His best friend too small to see

waving from the train.

Come now already, his wife would later say,

so she always had pursed lips

her hands grasping their children

they were like two wriggling fish or cats

one looking up, the other down.

But he likes his fine collection of

too-late pictures

who else could have caught that moment

just after the sun disappears

when all that’s left is the sleepy gleam

on the vacant horizon?

04/20/08, rev 08/16/08, rev 04/20/09