How could I forget to take photos?
I, the one who snaps them everywhere?
Who keeps the iphone handy to whip it out?
Catch a flower, bird, butterfly?
In parks, on beaches, at parties.
How did I fail to capture a portrait?
Of my cousins, my husband and me?
In a local restaurant or back at our house?
Were we so engrossed in conversations?
Aging, downsizing, cemeteries.
Deaths of contemporaries.
Now the elders, should we do a family reunion?
Revive an old cousins’ club?
How would we go about it?
Organize it?
Convene young and old?
Bridge generations?
Get them to know each other.
Swap stories.
Maybe that was why.
The gravity of the exchange
extinguished my photo plan.
Instead, my mind tarried
on how unsure our life span.
Lynn Benjamin
October 28, 2023