My Father Photographed With Friends

This is my father photographed with friends, when he was young.
Unsettled on the steps of a wooden porch, and the one
who lived there elegant beside him. They and the others
hopefully casual in the face of the deciding camera,
the judgments of which are unfeeling but can be swayed.
And I, as in some later picture of myself,
look for a person identified beyond doubt, and knowing that he
is none of the ones that he is not,  yet still unsure,
under the features composed and trusting, who is there.
As if the decision were long and legal when handed down,
hard to be read and truly rendered in such a case.
And hard, in the face, to find our usual pitiful ends.
God sweeten the bitter judgments of our lives. We wish so much.