This is one verse from the poem, Objects, by Martha Ronk in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Boston Review:
a photographic album
The experience of things missing seems itself to be disappearing, although I am speaking here of one tiny realm of experience, of turning the pages of a photographic album as the relatives in my family used to do, although not in recent years, since most of them are dead or live so far away that, although they may still be doing such things, turning pages slowly as the couch sinks into featherless flatness, I no longer am witness. What I refer to, however, is not the absence of photographic albums per se, but of that experience of turning a page into which black-and-white photos have been glued, only to find that one of the photographs is missing. Traces of glue remain on the page, perhaps even bits of the backing, but the photograph is gone, missing entirely — some aunt perhaps or a boy with a baseball glove or oneself. If I could remember a particular pose or particular set of apartment steps, I might remember the photograph that’s missing, but the person I was is now also missing and it seems suddenly the clue to a time, even were the documents intact, that is lost.
-Julie
