With the Cousins in the Foreground, Holding Hands

The serious portraits
Of the dead are always
A little strange to see,

However accustomed
The thoughts become to them.
You look at the faces

That held still for the flash,
As instructed. Silent,
Unsmiling, pretending,

In a way, not to be
Alive, not as bodies
That were churning just then

With thoughts, racing pulses,
And biochemical
Furnaces, they’re statues,

Silvery silhouettes,
And if not actual
Ghosts, the echoes of ghosts.

Each face says, I held back
Most of me in this act,
So some of me might stay.