“Father and Children” by Sherry Chandler

533 Replies

(Composition in Sepia Tones, ca 1937)

What is she looking at so intently off
to the right? My sister, maybe three years old,
her hair a blond bob, her face turned away.
Her coat hangs open from the top button, cutting
a diagonal across the snapshot’s right angles:
the clapboard wall of Granny’s house, the mass
of the poured concrete porch where she stands,
the brim of my father’s hat. He’s perched on the edge
of that anomalous porch—an artifact
connected in my child’s mind with the slabs
of concrete paving Taft Highway. Why
did I think its making cut away the front yard,
left the house on a high bank? Daddy
also faces right. The angle of the pipe
dangling from his mouth, the line of his outstretched
leg, match the angle of my sister’s coat. Between them,
my older brother, a fat-cheeked toddler in a coverall.
He stands straight-on to the camera, as he always does
in these old photos, but his eyes are cast down.
The shadow of a limb crosses Daddy’s
face, so it’s late afternoon, early spring or late
fall. Light glints off the big front window.
One child left to come before the Great
Depression gives way to World War II,
Daddy maybe working for the WPA.
He’s wearing brogans. I come at the end of the war,
nearly a decade unborn. How posed and static
the photo is, except for my sister.
She leans a little toward Daddy, her coat
swings open, she’s about to run
to whatever it is that’s out of the frame.

-Sherry Chandler

533 thoughts on ““Father and Children” by Sherry Chandler”

  1. Karen

    Love this poem! All the concrete details really ground the poem, make me feel as if I’m not only holding the photo, but am in the scene you create.

    Reply ↓
  2. Kristy Nowak

    This is great–I like the focus on angles, it really emphasizes both the scene and the fact of the snapshot.

    Reply ↓

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