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.