Forgetting About John Fahey Poem by Michael Philips

The first photo is a colorless
over-exposed grimacing boy in a cap
standing before a white clapboard house
urged to smile, anxious for play,
not yet aware of acoustics.

In the second photo,
as if in formal fencing posture
head aloof, solemn as a magistrate,
a line for a mouth,
holding a contraption with metal strings,
comfortable with performance.

The third photo is an arc of ascent and decline,
tinted in unpopular colors,
an immersion into the disjointed,
the notes piled like unread magazines
or sparse as tropical plazas.
A blind joe death reliance on a guide dog
that leads him half-way
across the highway.