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A Photograph - Shirley Toulson

A Photograph

The cardboard shows me how it was
When the two girl cousins went paddling
Each one holding one of my mother’s hands, 
And she the big girl - some twelve years or so. 
All three stood still to smile through their hair
At the uncle with the camera, A sweet face
My mother’s, that was before I was born
And the sea, which appears to have changed less
Washed their terribly transient feet. 

Some twenty-thirty- years later
She’d laugh at the snapshot. “See Betty
And Dolly," she’d say, “and look how they
Dressed us for the beach." The sea holiday
was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry
With the laboured ease of loss

Now she’s has been dead nearly as many years
As that girl lived. And of this circumstance
There is nothing to say at all, 
Its silence silences.

- Shirley Toulson


Summary And Theme :

The poetess in this poem is describing the photograph of her mother's childhood when she went on a holiday with her two cousins. Further in the poem, it can be seen that the poetess is seeing the face of her mother and noticing the changes which come by the passage of time. The poetess is very emotional and attached to her mother and now she is missing her a lot. She can't be able to forget all the laughter that are attached to the photograph. The Pain of Separation with her Mother made her soulless.




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