One image in dozens of photo albums left to me

I don’t know where the dead are now, but I know at the intersection of my father and this day he pulled his car to the side of the road, coffee in one hand, steering wheel in the other, didn’t use the parking brake

(& why would he, in the middle of a prairie) & got out to stretch, so many states to go, no radio, just the hush and hum of the blacktop & his sixth sense of weather & it’s July, I’d suppose, from the blooms

near peak or just past it, & the sun washes the whole sweep of acreage out here to horizon a bright inland sea with no vanishing point or distant stand of trees, & he’s either coming to visit me

in Georgia or headed home to Colorado, the dead giveaway is this town’s off I-70—that, & his habit of snapping landscapes & I’ve read it’s true the flowers follow the sun

as if they have faces all turning in unison time lapse shows & the heavy seed heads soaking up water, sun, CO₂ & sugars pumping up thousands, millions of stems, no blood

circulating but sweetness & armies of caterpillars, grasshoppers devouring lush green, & perplexing how, in that field with no landmarks, you’d never know if you were coming or going

O Kansas
O Blooms
O Time

& to be by your side, Dad, watching you take this picture, watching you watch the field, & O sad song of 18-wheelers, how to know in the moment what is worth loving, pulling over for & in my mind this is where you perpetually stand, fiddling with the focus by the roadside.