When I watch you

I’ve been writing from some old black and white photographs of my parents when they were young, pictures mostly taken by my grandfather the amateur photographer. In a family that didn’t tell stories about itself these photos are the few stray bread crumbs left in a trail that the birds almost picked clean. They lead somewhere, these pictures, these moments. They lead here, of course, to me, to my sons, to today as surely as the past always leads to the future; but they lead someplace else, too, down other paths to alternative futures my parents could have, but didn’t, live out. And they lead me backwards, as well, back to each of those moments to wonder which was the moment they chose this future instead of that one, or that one.

Did they in fact even choose, or did they just take the car out of gear and let the momentum carry them?

 Christmas 1953

The back of her hand
meets her brow
in a gesture so theatrical
it could almost be posed,
the distress signal of a dozen
damsels in distress.
Her arm is all slender grace,
the branch of a weeping willow.
Her eyes are closed;
she is tired of pretending cheer,
wants to leave.

He is turned to her
his hand grazing her exposed back:
a solicitous reflex -
I almost say “as always”
but on the back of the print
her careful hand has noted
Christmas, 1953.
Married a mere seven months
there is no as always
yet.

He is wearing a suit,
she glamorous in black strapless.
They are smoking
(as always)
but there are no cocktails
unless they’ve been cropped out
or that habit has not developed
yet.

She is just twenty
but looks already weary:
that arm frozen in time
hand to brow
those closed eyes,
the beginning of a sigh
as if she already knows
all the disappointing years
before she dies.

#

You can catch other poetic glimpses here.