a carefree smile from the 15-year-old
caught on a hillside in the summer air
in pure happiness..or so it images..
It’s the only photo from the album
that I like to have around; I look at it
and marvel that I ever looked like that
for more than one unguarded moment..
Is the story of my childhood that I tell myself,
the agonies of growing up, the uncertainties,
the discovery that parents are not perfect…
the not knowing who one really is…or might be…
all that, a fiction, or a fraction of the truth?
From time to time, I glance at it,
(as my parents must have done,
with all the thoughts that I’ll now never know) :
accept its mute challenge of beauty, goodness, truth…
he’s expecting all that life may offer;
this is the guy I must keep faith with…
what else is there to say?