Self-Portrait as a Portrait of My Grandfather, December 8, 1941
       

If a memory bears radiation's
relationship to time; if his eyes are
and are not mine; if strawberries once
rotted in muddy crates on a farm
unfarmed and seized. Then, a reborn face's
parabolic features curve an axis
never crossed; then, salt and silver nitrate
scribe light's dictation on the page

of them and us—of me and him—of fear's vindictive
aperture and frame. Of how what's outside
fades what's within—or how a cold sun gathers in my eyes,
my hair, my mind, like half-lives
borne on wind. How half alive and half asleep,
each waxen pore's single seed.

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Copyright © 2021 Michael Prior All rights reserved
from Burning Province
McClelland & Stewart
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission