Photographs & Time

There’s a group photograph
on the school playing field
a few years after
the baby in the pram
and on the granny’s knee photograph
and then there’s only
the odd one or two
to flick through
until we arrive at the one
outside the church
in the white dress
next to the man who would share
nearly seventy years with her
which results in
more babies in prams
and kids sitting on front steps
and on beaches
and wearing school uniforms
and then more wedding photographs
and new-born baby photographs.
I could continue
but

I look at her,
absorbed in that hazy world she inhabits,
and wonder whether
memories flit through her mind,
in black and white, in colour,
fleetingly, randomly,
or, highly unlikely, in chronological order?


Photographic Memory