Fully aware or not, we survive
This life thriving on clues.
How a baby beaming means
An angel is coaxing him to smile,
The elders would say. Snap,
And there it is, his only photograph
As a baby, hanging on his mother’s
Bedside green wall. Asked or not,
We tend to offer evidence that we grow up;
That indeed, we started off as tiny things,
Later into trees with unruly branches.
We try to take a second look at the faces
We see. Perchance, to remind us: Where
Have we met the unfamiliar ones? Those
Not perfectly aligned; the photograph’s
Uncomfortably pegged to a rusty nail.
Meanwhile, our eyes are gravitated
To the smudges forming around
The edges of that photograph,
Made perhaps by the mixing
Of time & water, forming maps
Of places and distances, where
The this once-child would go.