1. Long exposure, 1892

All of them dead by now, and posed

so stiffly, in their sepia Sunday

best, they seem half-dead already.

Father and Eldest Son, each dressed

in high-cut jacket and floppy tie,

never get to sit in the sitting room.

They stand to face a firing squad

behind Mother and the little girls—

themselves bolt upright on the sofa,

hands at their sides, their center-parted

hair pulled back, two rows of rickrack

flanking the twenty buttons down

the plumb line of their bodices.

And here, discovered alone downstage

and slightly to the left, the boy—

such a beautiful boy. Although

they’ve tried to make him a little man,

upholstering him in herringbone,

you can see him itching to run out

with his hoop and stick, happy because

even at this moment, when

nobody could be happy, he knows—

in the tilt of his blond head, the frank

time-burning gaze beneath his cowlick—

that he is the most loved.

2. Flappers, 1925

I’m in the guesthouse some days before

focusing on another portrait:

professional, black-and-white, composed

to lend a spacious dignity

to the one life lived behind each face.

Again, the date’s approximate;

I’m guessing from the arty look,

the flapperish, drop-waisted frock

and ropes of wooden beads on the wife

of—yes, it has to be. No more

the poster boy for posterity,

he’s a commanding forty. The cowlick’s

still there (although now he slicks

it down with something), and he still

cocks his head to one side, a hint

of flirtation, exasperation—what?—

in the eyes he trains at the camera

as if he’d give me what I want

if only he could emerge now from

the frame. We stare in mutual

boldness while his wife’s long profile

is tendered to the child between them.

One girl: a modern family.

I speculate a little son

was lost to the great flu; even so,

this fair-haired Zelda in a bob,

ten years old, would come to seem

enough, the image of her father.

The smile high-cheeked and confident,

the shining eyes, the upturned chin—

people matter more now; they’ll die

less often, now that the Great War’s over;

everyone’s allowed to sit down.

3. Wheelchair, 2000

The jumbles of grinning faces jammed

together at birthdays and Christmases

in color photos around the house

     don’t interest me.

They’re merely today, or close enough;

anybody can record it

and does; if everything’s recorded

     nothing is.

But puttering about, the guest

of a ghost I now am half in love with,

I’m drawn one day to pluck one image

     off the piano.

A wedding. Or some minutes after,

outside a church I’ve seen in town.

The bride, who has exercised her right

     to veil, white gown,

and any decorum life affords

these days, is surrounded by the girls—

some floral aunts, a gawky niece

     in her first pearls—

and all the men in blazers, khakis …

running shoes? Boys will be boys.

Squirming, they squint into the sun:

     some amateur

shutterbug has made sure they can’t

see us, or we see them, and yet

I understand now who is shaded

     there in the wheelchair.

Dwindled, elderly, it’s Zelda—

her lumpy little body slumped

like a doll’s in a highchair, shoes just

     grazing the footrest.

It must be she. However many

lives her hair went through—Forties

complications held with tortoise-

     shell combs; beehives;

softer bouffants like Jackie’s; fried

and sprayed gray-pincurl granny perms—

in all the years (say, seventy-five?)

     since I last saw her,

she’s come back to that sleek, side-parted

bob, which (though it’s white) encloses

the girl who’s smiling, pert, high-cheeked,

     despite the pull

of gravity: just like her father.

Or as he was. When did he die,

and how? What was his name? What’s yours?

     I could find out,

surely, when I leave here; the owner

might well be her granddaughter.

I could scout, too, for snapshots even

     more recent—some

get-together with no wheelchair—

to prove what I’m sensing: Zelda’s gone.

Why would they bother to frame this scene,

     unless it’s the last?

But why should we care so for people

not us or ours—recognized by sight

alone—whose voices never spoke

     with wit or comfort

to us, and whose very thoughts,

imagined, every year grow quainter?

Yet they must have felt this tug as well,

     repeatedly

peering at someone they were bound

to come back to, as in a mirror.

Who says they’re more anonymous

     than I am,

packing up after my two weeks

in the guesthouse? I make one last study

of Zelda’s father, lingering with

     the boy, the man,

sealing his developing

face in myself for safekeeping.

Too soon to leave. But then, nobody

     ever stays here long.