The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org

by John Delaney



Two Photos (1951, 2010)


All of us face the firing camera
as if nothing mattered, only smiles did.
I was barely two, and the three of you,
in pigtails and bangs and party dresses,
could boast of six and nine and almost twelve.
Poor baby brother, I was the spoiled kid.

To reach the other photo, each had to cross
a crevasse, a chasm, a grand canyon
of sixty years. In formal dress, two clasp
wine glasses, all link arms to celebrate,
with white hair, a beard, three colored hairstyles,
surviving divorces, children, careers—
yet mostly time, that promised nothing back when
nothing mattered. But no one knew that then.



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