Something my Dad
saw one day
he wanted to keep.
A memory of hoodoos
in hot July.
Walking the trail
long before his cancer,
long after his humiliating poverty
and being taken advantage of
one too many times.
He must have been looking up
at these sentinels of stone
rising golden on blue sky
wisps of cloud passing
by like a whim.
Something told him:
Take this picture
Save this much.
Maybe it’ll turn out.
Years later,
snow falling outside,
I look again at the
twin hoodoo giants
and recall a small man
in bright-coloured clothes
walking some ways
behind his wife
both of them smoking,
but something clicking
for him that moment,
there on the quiet valley floor.