Photograph

Richard is down on all fours.
Elizabeth,
her tiny face chapped,
clearly adores
and points where each color should go.

Her Uncle is down on the floor,
trapped between two blank coloring books
she in time will fill.
Richard's knees are sore,
but you wouldn't know from the photo.

Now that Richard's gone
and Elizabeth grown up and taking lessons,
who can tell what that experience meant?
What a camera lent to the scene?
What the memory brings?
And why, today, I remember?

It would seem in spring,
we enumerate tragedies passed,
note new grass cut
(one effect, at least, of the rain)
and consider what
it is we still have and what time took.