See her there? The famously ornery one
in a rarified moment of rest—statuesque in her
life-vest on the back bench of the rowboat
hitched to the dock. Her father, the oarsman,
has gone back for his camera.
He’s on the landing now, but for this
eternal moment he will never arrive
and she’ll never know anything but this
contentment, in the tender hands
of a new kind of knowing—the floating kind
that breathes a quiet that smells of seaweed.
She bobs willingly; lets the world
drift on without her—the clocks
spring back to ticking and a woman
begins her slow unfoldment
from the child—the woman her family
and some distant version of herself
will forever mistake for her.
There will be a flirtatious boy
in psychology class who drives
an MG-3. There’ll be trysts
in the cornfields, a wedding cake,
grandchildren.
Promises will be kept
and broken. But she will remain
oblivious to all of that—
to anything but this.
Thank you again! It’s a joy to find my poems in your pages
“PHOTOGRAPH OF GIRL ALONE IN A ROWBOAT” Is Prartho Sereno at her beatific best. Although her father will eventually enter the boat, he is not there now. The irascible girl, in this moment of solitude, will be oblivious to all the vicissitudes life has to offer. A photograph of a perfect moment in time.
This is a subtle poem that I read as about a childhood moment when the person in the piece, or we, know who we are, apart from parents and family, an inner sense of self regardless of how others see us or what experiences we wade through–self-perception that forms early, a kind of enlightenment of one’s true nature. Wonderful capture of this.
I love the “freeze frame” moment, captured for reflection against the flow of all that will be, the perfectly mindful moment when neither past nor present matters. Thanks! Betsy Lynch