Mother’s Day, 1964

There are fourteen of us
in the photograph.
We stand in a row
in front of my grandmother’s
screened porch, squinting
into the California sun.

We’ve crowded together
to fit into the picture,
from fat Uncle Johnny
on the left, to my skinny
husband on the right.

My grandmother,
who’s ninety one,
sits in her wheelchair,
a corsage of white gardenias
pinned to her dress.
The youngest is my son,
just over a year old.

In less than twenty years,
my three aunts, their husbands,
my grandmother, her companion,
and my father, who’s taking this picture
with his new Nikon,
will all die.

Uncle Johnny will go first.
He’ll stop for a beer
after work, come home complaining
of indigestion, and be dead
within the hour.

My husband stands slightly apart
with his hand on my son’s shoulder,
holding him apart, too.
In ten years
he will sue me for custody.

I’m near the middle
wearing a dress I’ve made myself
and holding my daughter’s hand.
I’ve taken off my glasses. Without them,
I don’t look like myself.
Without them, I can hardly see
where I’m going.

published in Twelve Los Angeles Poets, 2002