(for Dickie)

I count aloud like a kid
learning her numbers—
one, two three, four, five

pairs of specs on his table,
not counting his shades,
which are who knows where?

I, who usually has more of
everything, own just one pair
for the everyday along with

a second pair of shades.
But he has close and middle
distance, progressives and

bifocals and single distance.
I envy him—not only his
array of eyewear, but his

actual eyes, which, since his
cataract removals, can see for
days, or at least tens of yards.

I’ll never have his kind of vision
that this still-got-it photographer
has, whose point and shoot prowess

on his phone many of us envy.
When people ask what camera
he uses, he’s been known

to respond, “It’s not the camera.”
No, it’s his perceptive eyes,
though he’d never say that.

How lucky am I, decades after
he discarded film and long lenses,
to see the world through the pixels

he produces, this fellow with
interchangeable lenses of
a different sort, a man with

extraordinary vision, one
who consistently, kindly
sees the world—and me—

in the best possible light.