Photographs

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality...One can't possess reality, one can possess images--one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.

~ Susan Sontag, On Photography 

A woman of not more than fifty, did everything what women used to do

full of drama, vigor and shades, like some character of an epic she was

tales with in tales in her discourse, but calm and composed was her visage

one day a panhandler roamed around, long he roamed and came to her place

after smelling the decorum and grandiose exterior of her well kept space

with parched throat he started asking for water, food and some old regalia

she was a woman of charitable and kind heart, gave food  at that instant

up she moved in the room  less touched, stocked with old materials and stuff

opened one by one the kind of suitcases and trunks that are no longer used

full of old-fashioned robes and garbs, so many still packed and unused

picked few up from a stack of such and gave the man away easily enough

she came back to the room again, a journey to the memory lane began.

Trunks crawling with dust, so much dust, and fragments of time gone by

her heart raced so fast when on bundles of photographs she laid her eyes

one after another and another she emptied them all, decanted all the relics

souvenirs of failures and successes, of puerile naughtiness and tricks

meetings and separations, constructions and deductions brick by brick 

layers and layers of memories uncapped, elated as if a gift she just unwrapped

so old and fragile, some torn monochrome pictures of her mum and dad

she's sitting in the mid, unaware of all that's to come, with  a baby face

girl she grew up with, and the next door boy with whom she always fought

class photographs and the pictures of every prize and gift she won and got

snapshots of gone realities still imprisoned here, reminiscing so profuse

tears were rolling out her eyes, gates of dam just opened, tears on loose.

An envelope was sitting there waiting to be opened by her teary hands

on a little touch, from it fell down an old portrait picture of her husband

one which was sent to her when they were to married, good old ways

the grin on her face, it was to remain on her face through out the day

thinking of times when they used to forget there lives a world around

and then the baby pictures, suddenly she could hear their crying sounds

snippets of times when they first talked, crawled around and walked

whole of her life lying in front of her, in these bits and pieces of papers 

upon closing her eyes she thought of what was she, what became, what now ?

sighed, sighed again, she smiled, of all the choices she ever made, how ?

for every choice, she had a face in mind, a lesson she learned and passed down

for time runs so swift so rapid, its restless pinions witness generations passed.

Her photographs, frozen retentions of all that happened so sudden and fast

happened but forgotten, happened but ignored, happened quick and passed

those times were never erased, all etched deep and preserved with paper and ink

past is worth clinging to, to remind us how far we've come in life and living.

A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you ― Brigitte Bardot