Pictures full of children
crowding the frame
set proudly up on tables
with the adults lined
in rows behind us, we stood
dressed and combed and polished
faces wide with grins
eyes dancing with devilment
waiting to scramble
after the flash-
Or caught in tee shirts
and overalls
playing on the kitchen floor
in black and white
or the odd off shades
of the earliest color prints-
Every year there were
more and more of us
to line up in steps
growing into awkwardness
and the sullen bravado
of adolescence-
Easy to see how we kept
adding up
paused for one breath
in an unstoppable
spill of joy
across the dark pages
                        

I am too busy
sorting through a lost world
like a box of old
black and white photographs
flat abstractions
I can still read
into their original colors
can hold each one
until it grows warm again
if only for the space
between one breath
and the next
I have no regrets
just a kind of homesickness
like the pain of fallen angels
exiled forever
to live in the shadow
of an unreachable
remembered light