Old Photographs (Poety)

My father (through my mother’s eyes)
seemed vague and hard to recognise —
filtered by her jaundiced view
his colours changed their natural hue —
paled or darkened as to whim.
She shaded, blunted, clouded him.

A fleeting glimpse was all I saw
of who he might have been before —
the man beneath the restless gloom
that hovered — seeped from room to room.
They hid his thoughts, those veils of grey
their layers thickened — kept at bay

the world — all those who might have seen
the man inside his private dream.
His resignation quietly bled —
the hurt locked in with words unsaid
and tension was the only clue
to feelings buried — what was true

and real about him — all denied
the passion and the love long-died.
Who killed it? Did a spark remain? —
some wistful glimmer doused by rain...
I sensed a yearning deep within
but joy was censored out of him.

Old photographs fade year by year —
grey likenesses that disappear
and blur their edges — lose their names
few faces left as death reclaims
them one by one. I wonder who
he was — this man I barely knew.