.
~ ..
'
LIZARD
Stopped and awful as a photograph
of somebody laughing,
But ten years dead.-sYLVIA
PLATH
It was you in the photo
the one
J
amesy took
that blithe day
at the beach. The moment after
I
think
when you held the gull's bones
in the salt spray above your head
for us to see - the rib-caught leaves
tiny flags flapping
on their tethers.
"I thought it was a lizard," you said.
"Alive
I"
And laughed
into the still freeze
of a photograph,
your long red hair
still
ruffled
by the scream.
James Bertolino
