The Photographer Poem by Ben Partenay

you were saying that it wasn't
very fair how some people
got it and others didn’t while
taking pictures of how trees

died. then there was the walk
into the woods and the snow
and ice and you saying it was
a metaphor for how shadows

felt. I was following your
footprints to the turnaround
listening to the click of the
lens, watching light go in

and out. you were saying
how you liked loud music, how
it felt like flying sometimes, how
it made the puppet dance in-

side of you. it was the way you
held the camera while telling me
“it’s how you hold your head”

in two hands sometimes, weeping.