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