The cardboard shows me how it was
When the two girl cousins went paddling,
Each one holding one of my mother's hands,
And she the big girl - some twelve years or so .
All three stood still to smile through theri hair
At the uncle with the camera. A sweet face ,
My mother's , that was before I was born.
And the sea , which appears to have changed less ,
Washed their terrible transient feet .
Some twenty - thirty - years later
she'd laugh at the snapshot. "See Betty
And Dolly," she'd say, "and look how they
Dressed us for the beach ." The sea holiday
Was her past , mine is her laughter . Both wry
With the laboured ease of loss .
Now she's been dead nearly as many years
As that girl lived . And of this circumstance
There is nothing to say at all .
Its silence silences.