Photo—1927 (To My Mother)


Who put you on that chair?
The high-topped, oak-backed
One in the year 1927 in Ontario, Canada?
You have your hand to your face
And your skin is brown and smooth.
The cotton diaper you are wearing
Is crooked and falling off.

Your father’s bare fields behind you
Stretch out of focus,
A land without trees, open to the
Wind and sun and sky
Falling all down around you.

Who took this picture, freeze-framing
Your child’s body so I could hold
The yellowed image in my hands
And know how your arms would grow
Long for hugging and your hips would
Be wide and swing in loose-limbed dancing?

I want to hold you, with your child’s
Limbs against me and look into your
Round brown eyes,
I want to whisper the songs I learned from you
Into your shelly ear.

You are many parts of many I know
In my bones.
Like the child in this picture,
Sometimes the ones I never knew
I love the most.