—after the photo “The Tuileries Gardens, 1980” by André Kertész
The chair’s shadow leans against a stone
column in the foreground of the photo. Metal
flakes from the chair’s round rusted seat.
With curved arms frail as sandpiper legs,
it gestures the feeble welcome it has
extended for decades. In the background,
a young girl—black wool coat tented
above stockings pulled knee-high—
bounds away from the dark pant leg
of her mother, whose body straddles
the worlds existing within and without
the photo’s margins. The chair seems
to watch them as it suns itself, basking
in Tuileries Gardens on a day that could be
any other day, but isn’t. On this day
a young girl runs from her mother,
tests the freedom that comes with distance,
looks back to watch what fills the space
she leaves behind. On this day, a mother
straddles two worlds for her daughter,
who cannot see the woman, caught
by a camera’s lens, turning away.
Photo Source: Phowi
© 2012 Bernadette Geyer. All rights reserved.
