The album lay among a pile of books,
Just scattered on the ground for all to view.
Where people glance, but no one really looks,
Preferring things more up-to date or new.
The photographs were faded yellow –brown,
Young children, mum, granddad and grandma too,
I closed the book and gently laid it down;
They’re not my kin, what else was I to do?
And yet I walked away with spirits low,
It seemed to me so sad to see it there
A record of a family long ago,
Discarded now, by those who do not care
About their roots, and what ancestry means
Those people whom they carry in their genes.
In a list
What did you think
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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Excellent
You did great with this one. So very well crafted and expressed. Thank you for sharing
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Hello Pat I loved your poem, ha, I dont know why I say that because I love everything you write. It puts me in mind of a poem I wrote a couple of years ag called "The Custodian" about a box of old photographs being sold at auction...I'll pm it to you...Dan
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Powerful piece, though while the people might be willing to discard the pictures, the people in the pictures will always live on in the people they influenced (and the people those people subsequently influenced.) A truly beautiful and though provoking write here and it is the loss of those who would be willing to discard such a treasure.
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I agree, and I think you've put your feelings into verse beautifully! I treasure the photos from long ago and cannot imagine why someone would throw out an old family
album. It makes me muse about how their family must have somehow sadly come unravelled.
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Dear Pat,
Old pictures showing times now long gone by
oft' conjure tears unbidden to the eye.
Are those folk still alive or did they die
and, if so, where and when and how and why?
In vain we wipe that surreptitious tear
brought on by memories of those held dear,
recalling happy times of yesteryear
when our departed loved ones still were here.
Though these old photos are of folks unknown,
they cannot but remind us of our own.
This is, again, a beautiful sonnet, Pat.
Dare I ask you to include this as Wyleian Sonnet CCLXV?
Applause, love and hugs, XXX Hugh.
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I adore looking at old photos and imagining just what the people were like, what they did, where they came from and it does seem a shame that they should become discarded and unloved.
Your poem has done them proud.
Sue
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First-class!
I have often had similar thoughts when confronted by albums of sepia pictures. I even have -and have had since childhood - a carefully embroidered samplar, made by some child in the mid-19th century. It bears the cheerful legend:
'Remember now thy Creator in the Days of thy Youth While the Evil Days come not Nor the Years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them Ecclesiastes' I used to wonder what them Ecclesiastes were.
Yet despite this having been in my family for all these years, I still feel that it in some sense belongs to the descendants of the child, one Sarah Anne Armstrong.
I think the final line could be tweaked - but I have spent a long time trying to do it, with no success.
Edward
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I cannot believe anyone would discard such an album...I treasure my photographs as I thought we all did, how naive of me!!!
Lovely of you to do them proud though Pat with this verse to go with the album.
Luv Lu x
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