Was I ever that young? And aren’t I
now, the way a flower, late fall,
still holds the seed? That girl,
big hair, big glasses, big life rising

from the girl squeezed into the other
picture, my mother, who grew
in the shadow of the kitchen’s stone chimney,
everybody’s mouth closed tight.

My mother made me that dress I wear in the one,
and her mother made the one she wears in other,
and on and on behind us. Though it stops
with me.