Poetry

Photograph of My Mother, Age 8, in 1909

David Chandler

 

She’s borrowed someone’s hat

or someone’s tied it on—

its brim and ostrich feathers

construct an aureole around her face.

 

I guess the grown-ups meant

to blend a belle epoque sirène

with someone small and vulnerable:

oh dear. She almost manages to smile.

 

Across a hundred years

my mother looks at me,

not knowing who she’ll be, or who I am.

The picture lives perpetually before.