POeT SHOTS is a monthly series published on the first Monday of the month. It features work by established writers followed by commentary and insight by Ray Greenblatt
POeT SHOTS #4, Series C
BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPH
by Joseph Cilluffo
It is 1967 and my parents
—though they are not yet my parents—
stand straight but arm in arm for the photograph.
In it, his army green uniform is grey
the medals, dulled to pewter on his chest.
But her dress—bright sun
at the center of the image,
perhaps the only thing
the black and white captures
as it truly had been that day—
is crenellated and crisp,
an oyster shell
over her pearl white body beneath,
the treasure trembling as it waits
to be found.
Years later the doctors will confess
politely apologetic, how little they understand
—forgive me, father, these sins
of omission—they will explain
with an observer’s detachment
that her brain was always predisposed
to the Parkinson's ,and they’re sorry
but they just don’t know
what the exact trigger was.
But on this day, none of that
has happened, yet, though I search
the photograph—a magnifying glass,
its worn wooden handle smoother
and thinner than when it was new,
brings everything closer for inspection.
I look for clues among the image’s imperfections,
a historian poring over the record,
the dog-eared creases blown up for my eye
into canyons carved
across the photography of her body,
bubbles in the silvered paper
disrupting thoughts.
But I find no hint in her green eyes
(brushed to black by the photograph)
nothing in her form as she cleaves to him
—her dress, his uniform
the dawn rising glorious from the land—
except perhaps in the corner of the image,
slightly out of focus
where the glasses used to toast the newlyweds
stand emptied already, forgotten
on the table behind them,
legs of wine left behind inside each glass.
The toast has already been given,
best wishes of those assembled bestowed.
The celebration, almost over
and only the hard act of living still ahead.
Photos preserve the past but can also forecast the future. The bride is the center of this poem: “bright sun”, “crenellated and crisp”, “pearl white body”, “the treasure trembling.” Time goes so fast that our lives can barely keep up: “Glasses…stand emptied, forgotten…The toast has already been given, best wishes of those assembled bestowed.”
Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.