Family photos

 
Pictures of us adorn this room:
The blurry engagement with that damn mushroom hair,
The bad wedding photo we should never have paid for,
The two of us sharing lunch on a mountain hike,
The family of five at various ages
with various dogs….
Those people all look like us – a little firmer, perhaps -
But they're ancient memories,
mere fetal facsimiles
or maybe it's alternate realities…
 
Looking in their eyes,
I realize those people hardly even knew themselves,
had no clue what was coming -
only vague ideas of desired selves  
and dreams that might have to die or adjust.
They thought they were already grown.  
Would they ever have guessed
where they'd be today?
It might have terrified them…
yet here they are living it,
the mundane and the extraordinary.
 
Someday we'll look back at a picture of us today.
We'll say “they had no idea"!
But whatever tomorrow's reality is,
we'll simply be living that too.