You mourn old photographs:

‘I was pretty then, and I never knew it.’

 

I’ve just filled an album

with our last pieces of paper

before digital took over:

It includes my mother’s 80th birthday

(she just missed out on 90).

A fabulous, tearful, joyous Sikh wedding,

dancing to the bhangra boy’s beat,

the marriage lasting little more

than a year. That holiday in Sorrento;

the kids came with us for one last time

because it was a posh hotel.  

You sunbathing in the garden;

still pretty, despite your protestations.

A precious reunion

with your best friend at university

and her family in the Highlands.

My ignominious attempt at rowing

across a sea loch, only surviving

because the wind blew

in the right direction.

Bust of Hemingway in Pamplona.

The smile of our beautiful daughter.

A favourite uncle blowing bubbles

at a reception. You in twilight

on the Clifton bridge.

 

Those were some years.

The forgotten photographs

surprise me, too, as I catch

myself puzzling

who was that bloke,

smart in light jacket and trousers,

captured, like a ghost, beneath

the big wheel at Galway?