Old Family Photos

 

In this picture I’m dancing

with my cousin Leo –

as kind as he was handsome.

I must have been 16. He,

older by seven years. 

Now I’m 86. He’s dead.

In this one, I’m a baby,

fat and round, like the beach ball 

posed beside me (a fashion

in baby snaps back then). Pretty

curls, pretty pursed lips, and 

a solemn, shrewd, appraising stare.

Here’s my young mother

in a long winter coat. The few 

trees are bare. Her dark, wavy hair, 

parted in the centre, is pinned 

back off her forehead. She is

holding me up to the light.

Here she is again, kneeling 

in an empty field beside one 

lump of rock. She’s draped it 

with McLean tartan. Red and green. 

Her father’s tartan. (I wonder

if I’m looking at Culloden.)

Of course, she was much

older then. That was the same trip 

when she and my stepfather posed, 

all dressed up – top hat, gloves – 

to attend, of all things, a garden party 

at Buckingham Palace. Such proud smiles!

There’s my little brother, with me 

and his best friend Roger, at The Gorge – 

showing off his balsa-wood boat, The Star,

which our dad made. We are standing

knee-deep in water. That same day 

The Star escaped, tumbling the rapids.

‘Stay there!’ said our dad, pointing

at the shore, as he set off to track it

all the way down to flat water. Only

the slender mast broke. But he found us 

crowded on top of a small, flat rock, 

oblivious of raging swirls. (No photo.)

We come to me in my twenties:

bridesmaid to a childhood friend,

then to my nearest cousin; my graduation;

then all those balls I attended with Don

whom I married first time around.

Even my own wedding.

The histories continued, but

the album comes to an end. This was 

the one I inherited after my mother died, 

the one she filled – mostly with pictures

of me. She wasn’t a cuddly mother, but,

after all, she must have liked me.

Written for Friday Writings #245: Family at Poets and Storytellers United.

Found haiku 2026

your package was left

in a secure location –

everybody needs a rock

From my Amazon orders.

Around Wollumbin

[Two for the price of one; see note.]

I live on an ancient shield volcano 

deemed extinct, honeycombed 

by the Northern Rivers. 

In its old basement

during explosive phases,

or when magma moved 

through central vents,

shales and sandstones 

were ripped away –

to be preserved as xenoliths, 

inside the cooling igneous matrix. 

                            ***

The rising hot basaltic magma 

absorbed, by assimilation, 

pieces of continental crust:

xenocrysts (mainly feldspar). 

We find feldspar bits

along roads, in creeks ...

Once I drew a crystal being

with wild orange hair

who came to me asking.

He said his name was Feldspar.

Wollumbin, aka Mt Warning (public domain).

The channelled drawing mentioned in the poem 

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1998:

Written for dVerse Quadrille 255: 44 words excluding title and including the word xenolith. A xenolith is a fragment of foreign rock trapped inside a larger, igneous rock.  I couldn't resist writing a second quadrille, as second stanza, to include the word xenocryst, an individual foreign crystal similarly trapped. 

It's partly a found poem, in that many of the words and phrases are used verbatim from a Google search about this area.  These geological terms turned out to be so musical, I couldn't resist including them!

Growing Apart

Why is it

one can absorb the changes;

one cannot? 

One and one make two –

only sometimes. 

At others, one and one

make one and 

one other.

Ideally

when love is full,

one and one make one –

becoming one, being

united 

whole.

(Which is perhaps illusion

or, only sometimes. But still.)

A long friendship

is a kind of marriage –

without the complications

of sex. Without

the financial

entanglement.

Easier in some ways,

more comfortable.

But lives go on, and happen

at times on different tracks.

They can lead

further and further away.

Not a loop rejoining, but

other directions, other

scenery / people /

contrivances for living.

The funny thing is,

you don’t notice. There is

still communication. 

(Communication is stilled

but you don’t notice.)

Until they say something

and you respond 

and they take offence.

And when you look at it

you can quite see why they do,

how it, carelessly, sounded –

only, once, the way it was meant

would have been clear, accepted,

understood, needing no 

explanation. No apology. Not 

between these two.

But it has come to this.

We no longer run

so deep – no longer joined. 

Instances proliferate.

Explanations, apologies:

wasteful. I detach 

quietly. Respond politely.

From the outside.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #243, where we are invited to write something which includes numbers.