artwork: ralph murre
Sorting Old Family Photos
by Alan Catlin
Looking through
a lifetime of my
father’s photos:
places they had
visited we had
never seen or heard
much about except
as a paper trail
of medical bills
in unusual places.
One photo, in particular,
of my father, reminds me
of last self-portraits
taken by a photographer
known for outrageous
personal pieces of
family, friends &
self; last frames taken
on a grassy hill
looking at the lens
as he rises, walking
away until he leaves
the frame completely
and disappears leaving
the unoccupied hill behind.
These photos of my father
on a path that is labeled
on the back as, “Bill in
the Cumberland Gap
in Fall,” then another
shot, identical to the first,
“Cumberland Gap in Fall,”
my father gone.
~ first published in Grasslimb
