Looking at an Old Photograph of my Grandmother

Looking at an Old Photograph of My Grandmother

On such a day as this, windy

with precocious spring and sun, gold spread glittering,

drenching my world with thick-butter measures of light,

on such a day you led me, a restless child,

down shimmering wood paths circling,

circling,

into a green-yellow forest of a dream

where three tigers danced

(and man’s gravestones not yet erected

nor put on their lying moss and lichen)

and, holding your sheltering hand—

or become you?—I also

In their center whirled

in a tiger dance of dappling light

and saw the carouselling world melt

to golden streamers riding the wind around me

and knew myself the center of all light.

But in that long-ago glade, when you brought me

to prismed light, revealing the miracle of our world,

What did you do?

Who were you?