October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen <br />I study my father's embarrassed young man's face. <br />Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string <br />of spiny yellow perch, in the other <br />a bottle of Carlsbad Beer. <br /> <br />In jeans and denim shirt, he leans <br />against the front fender of a 1934 Ford. <br />He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity, <br />Wear his old hat cocked over his ear. <br />All his life my father wanted to be bold. <br /> <br />But the eyes give him away, and the hands <br />that limply offer the string of dead perch <br />and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you, <br />yet how can I say thank you, I who can't hold my liquor either, <br />and don't even know the places to fish?<br /><br />Raymond Clevie Carver<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/photograph-of-my-father-in-his-twenty-second-year/
