Sorting the Photos

Jim Hall

The year in Baltimore where the weather
was always inside our clothes,
where I first saw you cry,
where we couldn't afford to develop
the few photos we snapped of
my first students who learned little
from me and told me so.

We've sorted the years. Made piles,
made notes on the back to our older
selves, those selves we expect will
forget. To our survivors who will
find us in them someday and wonder
why this tree, why so many cats
sleeping, cats eating, cats and cats.

The year in Florida, all over-exposed,
where angels were peeking around the borders
of the frame. Friends kissing us.
Friends sailing, friends wishing us
farewells we didn't see until now.

The year in Utah, by ourselves.
Our drafty cabin, snow in the living
room, snow quilting our bed, the ghost
of snow in all the summer scenes. Photos
of dazed cats, staring at the snow waiting.
Of you looking at seams in the air,
that look I mistook for a maturer love.

The year back in Florida. All our smiles
posed. The terrible strain, the invisible
anger, the betrayal in the eyes of everyone.
Even the cats no longer eat or sleep, but

are always in trees, crouched, perched
awkwardly on fences, ready to spring into
one imprisonment or another. The parties,
filmed over with the fear that this one
would be the last you ever took of me,
that I ever took of you.

The last five years were the easiest
to date. A better camera, more selective,
but cats, still cats sleeping, again eating,
cats on the new furniture, cats on the new
bed. The vacation pictures now, trips to
one island or another, where we had unprintable
ecstasies that we photographed anyway. These
are the years we learned more about the camera,
how to make it lie for us, how to crop, edit,
how to show the deeper truth. The beer bottles
in Key West, in neat empty rows, the ones of us
together that no one else was there to take.

We sort the photos. Make the years into piles.
Everywhere there are cats doing what we would
be doing in a better world. We throw away only
the ones without people or cats,
the landscapes too wide and gorgeous to keep.