Your black and deep eyes
are openings to caves,
the kind where rabbis slept
when Jerusalem fell
as enemies lurked in the hills.

You are so tired now.
Your Great War is finished,
that brush of beard hides
the rush of age, the wife
and daughter you lost.

I have seen you before: 1894,
posed for another shot,
derby, waist coat, watch fob,
legs youthfully crossed at the knees.
Message received: you were free.

The final photo is missing.
Thirteen years in your future,
back of the store in Clairton, Pa.,
my boy of a dad sad as he heard
his half-brother wail, “The tata is dead!”