Photos
Sepia with age
Carefully mounted
On thick cards
Studio names on the bottom
Handsome people
Dressed in finery
Carefully posed
Frozen in time
In places named Os and Bergen
In a box in Momma’s things
Some with names
Some in a little sack
“My Mother’s Family
In Norway”
1910 her mother left home
Photos older than that
The way to carry them
The kith and kin and friends
Across the wide water
And the vast plains
A strange land with strange people
So very far away
From the flesh and blood
Behind the little rectangles
Of cardboard
Sepia with age.