Family Album My first camera was a Kodak Brownie -strictly for use on trips to foreign lands. With a twelve exposure film (quite fiddly to fit) you had to choose your shots with care not waste a thing, then wait a good two weeks if you could bear before collecting with trembling hands the small square prints from Boots. Photos? They`re ten a penny now Shoot fifty in an hour, the norm a healthy disregard for analogue. Just store them in the Cloud, life`s one long pose. Bring on the selfie! Give me a good old-fashioned family album Leather-bound, well-thumbed where the prints are held in place with tiny clear corners and there`s always that annoying empty space where one has been removed. Those simple saturated Kodachrome hues speak of the past our vanished youth No app to tweak the radiance No photoshop to mask the truth. To add colour to the eulogies we found some good ones alright. Here`s one of Mum with Kenneth and Bart exploring in some fields outside the house as kids did long before. You can tell she`s in charge, (the smart Senior Tutor to their curious schoolboys) She cradles what looks like a mouse as they look on in awe. Three brothers silent upon a gorge in Southern France Staring into the future through the bleached noonday sun of Provence. And (much later this) on a whim in the back garden one summer dusk Its Dad the patriarch, cool as a Mafia Don His sons similarly cigared affecting the same insouciance as him Mere satellites around the central star. Mu and Paka on that familiar stroll down the driveway at le Bournet, walking into the evening sun, Putting the day to rights, talking. Finally this one although I am too young to recall I`ve painted us in monotone, we are but passing through Colours stick to things that last in time The road`s still there, that actual view: Ladythorn Avenue, Marple. (1959). Jonathan choked up at the funeral on seeing it on screen which made me look at it again What is it about the scene that lacerates? Those impossibly bright blooms belie the march of time, they can`t betoken pain. Is it the poignancy of lost years, the sense of place, Lost toys, lost cars, lost innocence, the out-of-date? Or is it just the look on Mum`s young face that pose Audrey Hepburnesque in its charms Light of all our lives with a natural grace Fixed forever lovely as she holds me in her arms.
2 Comments
BBB
18/9/2020 06:57:18 pm
You are a huge talent, the poem is beautiful as is the art.
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30/10/2022 06:02:04 pm
Society believe determine. Change pay base grow window himself compare. Town full scientist mother good style. Significant campaign fly around sign.
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AuthorSimon Dalby Archives
December 2021
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