Old Photographs

Creased sepia pictures of another time

Explode onto the small rectangle screen

Instantly transporting us back generations

Firing up our imagination

We crowd around in wide-eyed wonder

Eager to savour their life stories in old picture format

The dresses, the hair – elegance personified

Their smiling countenance

As familiar as our own to we

Four cousins gather around the table

Staring in awed fascination

Images of our mothers – our ancestors’

Breathing life into life – into bagpipes

Making music to dance and sing

Long before we graced this earth

Or were even thought of as of their lineage

Young women of the roaring 20s

One day to be our mothers

I sense them come amongst us now

Peeping over our shoulders bowed

Gazing over the cooling teacups

Staring like us at this ‘magic box’ this technology age

Permitting them to ‘see’ themselves as they were

When life’s journey begun