A Photography

 The cardboard shows me how it was     

When the two girl cousins went paddling

  Each one holding one of my mother's hands,

And she the big girl - some twelve years or so.

 All three stood still to smile through their hair.

At the uncle with the camera.

A sweet face.

My mother's that was before I was born.

 And the sea which appears to have changed less,

  Washed their terribly transient feet.

Some twenty- thirty- years later         

She'd laugh at the Snapshot ,

See Betty   And Dolly " she'd say and look how they .

Dressed us for the beach

The sea holiday .

Was her past, mine is her laughter.

Born wry with the laboured ease of loss.

Now she's been dead nearly as many years

 As that girl lived.

And of this circumstance

There is nothing to say at all.

      It's silence silences.