Camera

When I was a kid
my mother had a camera
and a stack of photo albums.
We'd sit on the couch
and look through them,
all those old photographs
of her parents and grandparents,
black and white,
everybody dressed up
like they were waiting
for the Wild West to begin.
She loved those pictures
and the stories behind them,
the names and faces
of people I'd never know,
but somehow felt I knew
because she'd tell me about them.

She'd make us stand still
for birthdays, Christmas, school pictures,
whatever mattered enough to freeze.
There was the old Polaroid too.
We'd stage the stupidest shit.
Pretend we were sleeping.
Pretend we were watching the rain
through the window,
holding a baseball mitt,
because apparently
that's what baseball players did
on rainy afternoons.
She'd comb our hair just right,
stage us beside a glass swan
or a book,
and snap the picture
before we could ruin it.

Years later
I'd open those albums
and stare at faces
I barely recognized.
There's my mother.
There's me.
There's people
who don't send letters anymore.
People who disappeared
into the mechanics of time.
I could still hear my mother's voice
telling me who they were,
but the years had already
started taking their cut.

Then I had children
and became the guy
behind the camera.
Birthdays, Christmas, first steps,
fishing at Whitmore Pond,
little faces covered in cake,
all the important shit
you think you'll remember forever.
I kept taking pictures
like I could save them,
like if I caught enough moments
on film
they couldn't get away.

Now the camera's in my phone.
No film.
No flashbulbs.
No waiting.
Just point and click,
and another little piece
of your life
gets stored somewhere
in the cloud
with a million other pictures
you'll probably never print.

My mom's gone.
My children have grown.
The house is quieter.
The old albums are still around.
And every now and then
I scroll through those pictures
and realize
life doesn't walk away.
It races.
It tears down the street
like it stole something.
And the camera never stopped
whirring, clicking, working.

It was taking pictures
the whole damn time.