PHOTOGRAPH OF MY GREAT GRANDPARENTS 1880.(Poem)

 
   My white great-grandfather is frightened of the camera's flash. 
   You can tell by the way he is standing. Seconds before the photograph 
   was taken, he would have faced the dark-sheeted box 
   as if it were a one-man firing squad. 
 
   My black great-grandmother stands next to him in a worn skirt 
   and shoes, carrying a gladstone bag. She looks like some homespun 
   doctor, the symbol of the hippocratic oath woven in the two snakes 
   of her done-up cardigan's buttons and holes. 
 
   However they seem, neither of them are in the image, but beyond it: 
   she is stirring bush remedies in an old saucepan, he is in the 
   paddocks cleaning rabbit traps of bloody fluff and paws. 
   And ...