When I look at the photograph of myself—
an infant in my mother’s arms—
I recognize my usual expression:
that solemn stare,
that vague air of melancholy
under the fuzzy knitted hat.
My pale mother is a stranger though.
She could never have been that young,
and as far as I know
she never knit anything.
It’s all there: the darkness
that will take me, the cancer that will take her.
In another picture, unsmiling on a swing,
I pump into the future,
my mother already a shadow–
dark silhouette just out of sight.
Photographs—those expert witnesses—
are potent as dreams the moment of waking.
I close the album
and put it in a drawer,
the one that sticks
and is seldom opened.
Linda Pastan
Linda Pastan was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991-1995. In 2003, she won the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement. Her 14th book, Insomnia, came out in 2015, and her 15th, A Dog Runs Through It, is due in May.
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