Photographs the Size of Poems.(Poem)

 
PHOTOGRAPHS THE SIZE OF POEMS 
 
   In our family album, you are the lost city, 
   the spot marked with an x. Here in sepia 
   you're nineteen, just out of the army, bent 
   to attention, as seamless as your uniform. 
   At your wedding, you're a thick black 
   shadow on the velveteen curtains. Here, 
   later, the paunch you'd never develop 
   is settling above your belt. Your frown, 
   like a breeze ruffling the surface of water. 
   Perhaps the car was playing up, perhaps 
   you were thinking of money and bills 
   or something you hadn't done at work, 
   everything in the photo is slightly blurred. 
   Christenings. Birthdays. Often, it seems, 
   you've dug up a smile and polished it clean 
   for the cameras, while Mum looks on 
   with a nervous, fluttering grin, as if she were 
   always warning Do be careful, love, won't you. 
 
   You rarely went to church but believed, 
   I think, in manners, decency and facing up 
   to lies. Sometimes there were Sundays 
   like this one, where you've got us ready 
   for North Ryde Methodist, mainly to show 
   your pious relatives you could do the right 
   thing by us. The minister, your cousin, 
   welcomed us at the door, he was dappled 
   with appeasement but in the service noted 
   those he'd like to see here more often. After that, 
   you stayed away, but you said it was all right 
   for us to go back, if that was what we wanted. 
 
   Mum had lugged us kids up to Ryde Oval 
   to see you batting for the First Grade XI 
   on this ambling Saturday. It's just on tea, 
   the scoreboard drums ...