I am looking at a photograph
from World War II.
A soldier stands alone
staring north toward China.
His left foot rests on a football
as if he had just stopped its bouncing
and his hat is cockeyed
as if he had just slapped it on.
He appears at the right
edge of the print and
on the left is nothing remarkable.
The photograph does not tell us
what has just occurred
to arrest the soldier’s attention,
or what he sees is about to happen next.
All we know is that at the junction
of the inevitable past
and the probable future,
he was not alone.
Someone interested
preserved a single fragment
of his time.
2001