A Box of Old Photographs
by Fred Collins Rights reserved Return to <Poems and Stuff>
Black-and-white,
out-of-doors snapshots,
grainy, washed out.
Low buildings, low trees,
low objects–
Tractors, combines, trailers,
balers, cars and pickups–
low horizon.
Everything crouching,
as if to hold on in the wind or
to avoid the full stare of the sun.
In posed groups,
Men
square-jawed and squinting,
as if in defiance of toil and time
and immensity,
Resigned in the face of defeat;
Women vague,
Seeming to look at nothing
while seeing everything,
Thinking whatever women think,
destined to years of loneliness;
Small children
bewildered by glint and heat
and dust but already having learned
to stand with their hands at their sides.
Dirt everywhere;
Plowed dirt in fields and
compacted dirt in farmyards.
Coarse weeds,
Along fences and
up against
broken down tractors
and implements.
Cockleburs and gourd vines
Thistles and sunflowers
Here and there,
A throw rug of goatheads
or grassburs.
A world of hot dirt and stickers
and graves.