To Watch You Walk

That's how it all began.

The gallery the sepia colored photographs
of ships against the quay at low tide
the harbor less silted the men in the rigging
small boys and girls appearing twice
 or more in those days when picture-taking
was slow and the exposure long
for the youngsters of that sea town
in those days and now those youngsters'

children how many years? the generations
looking out to sea all this time
collecting samphire on the marshes
slipping through the mud-slick estuary
each new moon and here they stand
clustered 'round the old prints
the forgotten photographic plates
retrieved from attics now the photographer

from London is in town and so he stands
on the edge looking across the figures
meeting and recognizing great grandmothers
and each other in this way
the gallery walls holding up their past
where the past likes to be
at eye level though young Frank
or Susan need holding up themselves

to see and through all this
your elegance in long Bedouin colors
long dark hair pinned back
with your Hawaiian shell comb
the heavy black-veined turquoise stones
hung quietly I see this quietly

how you walk head high
like an exotic bird gliding
through peoples of another place
tied there by the pull of the sea
tied there so firmly they almost
do not see your peregrinations
your way of touching down
and passing through