Shots From The Attic Poem by Sonny Rainshine

They can puncture like a bullet: snapshots,
fading photographs that pinched a sliver of time
from yesterday and plunked it into today,
as if that moment had tried to escape,
to scurry along to join its comrades, the past,
but couldn’t.

Photographs: pictures of light—
and shadows too. We peer at the youthful faces
and for a moment wonder who they are,
the boy with the funny shirt: Me.
the girl with the flaired skirt: My sister.
the weary-looking lady: My mother.
The empty space next to the weary-looking lady:
my father.

Something snaps,
sort of like the click of a shutter,
the crisp break of a twig
in a silent wood.
This was my youth, fading,
no longer glossy and immediate,
but real. There it is.