Taking A Look
A plastic bag of photos pulled down from the attic, in the time to give things up. There go Aunt Adelaide’s dyed red hair, her bald husband’s cap, my mother grinning shyly next to Selma on the roof of that shared building, the sun-warmed tar, their ruffled white dresses, Selma’s lisp, her thin knobby arms. Were they lovers? There go three women I never knew, in long bathing suits on a pebble beach like Brighton. Look at those jaw lines. They must be Nana’s cousins on a visit from the North, who first applauded her in music halls as she chirruped her songs. There goes my sister, also smiling on a roof. Is this genetic? Her white bathing suit a flash of satin among TV antennae, years before she gets taken away. There she goes with father, their grins lit by the flash, almost arm in arm. Wave goodbye—two brothers, one holding the other who hasn’t yet learned to walk, shadows of the El a spider web that’s cast over them. Doesn’t the future count? Here’s a not so dusty album kept safe. Look at the neatly placed prints of last year, how you and I smile on the bank of the Seine, holding tartines beurré, the gray Paris sun the same softening hue as the river, our reflections caught down there like half drowned revelers as the past keeps rushing by.