Family Portrait.

FAMILY PORTRAIT
for Anna

   All my life I've lived
   with the photograph
   my mother took with her
   when she left the Ukraine
   and travelled to Germany
   before the outbreak of World War II--
   hanging, today, in an ornate frame
   appropriate to the Old World.

   Growing up I never asked
   detailed questions about it.
   Why should I? What
   more could she say
   except it was herself,
   her mother and older brother.

   Now that my mother is dead
   I look closely at what
   I actually inherited--
   at what appears to be a montage
   of three people photographed
   separately, coloured and overlapped,

   their embroidered shirts
   and blouses, stitched in rural style.
   My mother, the only one smiling,
   looking like a teenager,
   wears a red ribbon or choker,
   has white flowers in her hair.

   Her brother, Peter, pale-skinned,
   in the middle, looks shy.
   "He was the kindest man
   I knew," she once told me.
   "I named you after him."
   My grandmother Anna--her hair
   tied back in a scarf--
   stares placidly, head tilted
   slightly to the right.

   In my quietest moments
   the portrait hangs in my mind
   and does not fade away--as other possessions
   I've acquired over the years
   fall into insignificance
   like dirt on the floor
   waiting to be swept away.

   Three faces that belong to me
   as well as to themselves
   and whom I'll live with for the rest of my life,
   assembled as a portrait
   that once belonged to my mother--that
   she carried with her
   like an exit visa from one life
   and passport to another.