A Photograph
by Shirley Toulson
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The poem meditates on a photograph of the poet's mother as a twelve-year-old girl, paddling at the beach with her two girl cousins, Betty and Dolly, while an uncle photographed them. The sea, unchanged over the years, 'washed their terribly transient feet'. Years later the poet's mother would laugh at the snapshot, recalling how they were dressed for the beach. Now the mother has been dead nearly as many years as she had lived when the photograph was taken. The poem moves through three phases of time, the mother's carefree childhood, the poet's memory of her mother laughing at the picture, and the present silence of the mother's death. Each phase is marked by loss, and the poem ends on the poignant note that the mother's death is a 'circumstance' about which 'there is nothing to say at all', 'its silence silences'.
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The mother's childhood at the beach
The 'cardboard' (the photograph mounted on card) shows the poet's mother as a girl of about twelve, paddling at the seaside with her two younger cousins, Betty and Dolly, each holding one of her hands. All three smiled through their windblown hair at the uncle holding the camera. It was a 'sweet face', the poet notes, her mother's face, captured before the poet was even born. The sea, which has changed little, washed their 'terribly transient' (short-lived, mortal) feet.
The mother's later laughter
Some twenty or thirty years later, the mother would laugh at the snapshot, pointing out Betty and Dolly and remarking on how they were dressed for the beach. The sea holiday was the mother's own past; the poet's past, in turn, is the memory of her mother's laughter. Both memories are 'wry with the laboured ease of loss', touched by a painful, half-humorous acceptance of things gone.
The present silence
In the final phase, the poet reflects that her mother has now been dead nearly as many years as the girl in the photograph had been alive when it was taken. Faced with this circumstance, the poet finds there is 'nothing to say at all', the grief is beyond words. The poem closes with the haunting line 'Its silence silences', suggesting that the finality of death silences all attempts to speak of it.