the old photos freeze you into when.
I imagine Christmas with warm comfort
and discoveries, the train endlessly circling
on the bedroom floor, poison pellets
making smoke from the locomotive;
the new books, exploring the Pacific
with Hyerdahl, World War II with Churchill
(the young people’s version of war
sanitized);
                    the chemistry set with only
one experiment that really worked—
something with changing colors;
Nonna’s nativity, dozens of hand-
painted figures plucked from Tuscan
hilsides all facing the bambino;
her hi-fi (a prize won at a festival)
playing Fred Waring’s carolers
through the speaker on the front porch
where you strung lights, one white
light placed carefully over the house number;
Dad’s grocer’s oranges filling the stockings
like an afterthought with those dark nuts
we could never crack.         
                                        I must tell you now:         
these are all gone.
Now we’ll find the comfort together.
Fears feel the same, each comfort is new.
You are locked in black and white.
I have found a key to colors.