Showing a Photograph to Raymond Carver of My Father in His 31st year

The grin and high cheeks, the tightened lips, poised
 before an exclamation to my mother,
   could break Raymond Carver’s taut heart.

His young father carried fish on a string 
 and bottles of beer in one hand. Little
  Raymond had not yet been born.

But I am the serious bellied boy
 at the wooden arm of your old lawn chair.
  I am pictured and pleasant enough and small.

I desire to be the opened book, 
 the paper in your right hand’s steadied grip, 
  left hand relaxed from reading me.

I would like to show you Raymond Carver’s
 poem and the 1934 Ford
  he parked behind his Daddy.

I would like to show Ray the jig-sawed scar
 on your outside right thigh and ask him why
  he thinks it never healed. 

Here's the classic Carver poem on which this is a riff.