Places I Can Only Go in Pictures and in Memories

This poem was written in response to the Rattle® Poetry Ekphrastic Challenge for December 2022 and was ultimately not selected. You can find more information here.

https://www.rattle.com/ekphrastic/

Places I Can Only Go in Pictures and in Memories

Glimpse into their souls

Depictions of the lives that once were

In a world that now is

People gone in physical existence

Now memories in our hearts

Stories captured in still frame

-

My mother’s mother and her four daughters in their Sunday best

Behind her smile is a secret she kept for nearly forty years

Three sons born before she was married, all given up for adoption

My mother’s father in his military uniform

Even in black and white, his smile sparkles

His rosary, once kept in his pocket, now sits beside his ashes in his urn

Today, his dog tags hang around my aunt’s neck

-

My father’s mother in her wedding dress

All her grandchildren baptized in a gown made from that cloth

All except for me, the only one of a different religion

My father’s father stationed in countries abroad

As he fought in World War II

He died when my dad was fifteen

My dad looks so much like him and I have his eyes too

-

And my mother, hair twirled in a bun

As she holds me, fresh from the hospital

The only child of my parents to survive into adulthood

She passed away one week ago, so suddenly and unexpected

The house empty, still, and silent in her absence

-

I stare at these old photographs

Some things exactly the same

Surroundings hardly changed

Yet, some things are so vastly different

Almost unrecognizable

People once so close, now so far away

I see them through windows to the past

And they visit me through doors to the future

Place I can only go in pictures and in memories

As I rock my baby in my arms

I recount their stories

Telling the next generation

So that our forbearers are not forgotten to time

Submitted under MRB