Is it really me in the newspaper
photo on Father’s Day in 1953?
Dad was named Father Of The Year
by the Paducah Sun Democrat
and we all had to dress up
for our picture on the front porch
and my memory starts
with the pushing and shoving
that ensued to make that happen
and the photographer’s impatience
at our display of group disorder.

Did he really think we were a model
family?

Because the framed copy
of that frozen instant
hung on the wall of the great-room
at our next house on Broadway, I began
to know that time does not go
in a single direction.
I am there
on the porch on Jones Street
at five pushing my way into the front,
and there again twenty-five years later
with a sister not born until 1957
who’s reading the flowery article
thinking she’s somehow missed out,
and there this moment in my body,
that’s changed it’s cells ten times,
telling my not-yet-born sister:
it will never be as stated
but every word is true