WATCHING THE BIRDIE!

All my life I have been
framed

inside a photo album
like little windows onto the past.

Here is even the obligatory
naked baby on hearth rug.

Mother's favourite
"I could only love you when

you were this small
...pity you couldn't stay a baby!"

With every page of the page I
grow up

impercitable at first but
then here I am again and again

at different stages of
who I am.

I flick the pages so
that I become

an awkward home movie
the semblance of life.

One time the world lives
in black and white.

Another - it's Kodachrome
here I am crying in colour.

Mother paying more attention
to the photos than to me.

I feel trapped in photos
as if sunlight had solidified

made the moment
prisoner.

The photo album sits
on top of the bonfire.

Burning the past.
Time going up in flames.

A black smoke reaches up
to touch an empty evening sky

as if creating the darkness
as night falls.

One photo manages to escape
snatched by the wind.

Obligatory naked baby
on hearth rug

with half its head
burnt off.

"Not so fast!"
I tell it.

Feed it to the embers
a flame flickers

back to life
eats it greedily.

"Ashes to ashes!"
I pontificate

as if I were the priest
of my own destruction.