In the beginning / the young Italians pose for a snapshot

they're standing upon their territory,

a backyard in need of some repair, or

at the least, a fundamental maintenance.

nourished, if not by the healthiest of meals,

the group stands for a well-directed snapshot.

from top left:

sister Janice and cousin Delores

who holds her baby brother, James.

from bottom left:

brother Robert, cousin Lois,

younger sister to Delores, and me, William.

 

this is monumental.

this snapshot is the personification

of the long romance.

preserved by the shutter speed direct from the Kodak laboratories,

this is the place from which God proposed alternatives to

what once might have been;

a counterweight to the old testament.

no lambs were slaughtered during its development,

and although most therein have died in body or spirit,–– from demon cancer,

from tainted blood, a failed heart, the sucking tentacles of politics,

one who remains is older than the rest, now frail and incoherent, the other,

soon to be lost to this world,–– where after them, there is nothing.

precisely the way it should be.