Old Photographs

They often looked startled and stiff, caught as in the beam of a headlight, like deer on the road at night
Our ancestors in those early black and white photos
We, the selfie brigade, their polar opposites.

This poem was Inspired by Wendy Dison's photograph Holding.


Found in Sepia

Not like the Earl and Countess of Larkin's Arundel Tomb,
trapped in effigy, hands joined in pleated stone.

These two stand apart, caught in a web of bitumen on pewter
or chalk on silver plate, iodine coated,exposed to light,
suffused in mercury fumes and then bathed -

Until a hand immersed in light
joins her hand clasped
and his straining away.


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177058

http://www.wendydison.com/