Looking at Snapshots on Mother's Day

Like this one—

fading family portrait, sixties style,

Mother, Father, Sister, Brother

in front of the fireplace.

Neil and Buzz had not yet proved

to the world that gravity,

the ultimate bully,

was not so tough after all.

That’s me, of course,

crew cut, cow lick, shirt tails tucked in,

a third grader’s leaning eagerness

to please.

But that smile is cut out and pasted

over a fact you’d never see

if you didn’t know

where to look.

That day, portrait day,

I had spent every eternal moment since dawn

tumbling down steep hills,

gravity’s newest plaything.

Freeze frame:

me pinned to my spinning bed,

the only thing left between my small body

and the dark center of the earth.

Next one:

cold porcelain hears my confession

of mortality, done to symbolic death

by viral marauders.

To see the point in speaking of such things

on a scrubbed and bright Mother’s Day,

like making a rude noise at a proper

Ladies Luncheon,

then look closely, just here:

See, my mother’s arm around my waist,

her hand placed gently across

my smoldering stomach

to say “I am here, I am here.”

It’s a detail in the snapshot that is

easy to miss, unless you

know where to look.