Polaroids get yellow when they age
Lake Nipissing never looked this shade of grey
Four beaming adolescents on its shore
Have long since parted ways, sailed
From glowing promises too impossible to be
I hope to half-grown or half-old, depending
On the hourglass you keep
Burning tears turned
Chocolate eyes to black
So long now forgotten exactly why
What words were said - who knows?
Does it matter anyway?
Other more fearsome storms have blown
Our tiny grains of sand turned
Into glistening pearls
Where ever we may be strung.
My three year old is calling
For one more mommy rock
My pre-teen beauty queen
Is painting fingernails in the dark
A gameboy playing underneath blankets.
A lesson learned that photographs
Can stand two decades jumbled
Deep below the sea of too small clothes
And broken toys and nursing bras
That lurk within my swelling closet
To emerge and then
Like any memory
Be tucked back in again.
Just a second, little one
Turn that down, you hear me?
Each small thing has its nestling place
That was ours, precious gems then
But this, old friends
Is my ocean now.
C.M. Harris Davies, 27/7/99