Zelda's Inferno exercise: the photo on the wall

Posted on: Sun, 07/24/2011 - 20:34 By: Tom Swiss

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem from one or more of the following random phrases (from the Urbanite, July 2011):

until the age of 21
a unique selection
white foam churns on the surface
spend less time in their cars

taking a class on sound
no boys allowed
appeals to and attracts the people
the summer of 1919

there is this big panoramic photo on the wall
from a company picnic or a community sports day or something
back in the summer of 1919 or 1929 or sometime back then
over eighty years ago

Sometimes I look at it and
I think "the odds are very good that
everyone in this photograph is dead now"

did some of those strong-thewed young men in their
       running uniforms die in one of the wars between then and now?
Or did they live the serene lives of sages, staying well away
      from history?

what of that girl-woman over on the right side
the one with the fiery look, direct into the camera
standing just in front of her friends
did she quietly marry and
become a dutiful mother?
trying to look through time I can't believe that, no,
I see her wild, an artist of some sort, of life if nothing else,
this world her canvas

a hundred pairs of eyes peer out of the past
at us, their unguessed-at inheritors

i am sure that we are not at all what they expected