Stanley H. Barkan

TWINS

for Bonnie & Bebe


Two little girls,
in an old photo,
I took for teens,
butare just little girls,
in the same outfits.
The one on the left,
called the “cute” one;
the one on the right, not.
Actually, they were
not twins, but triplets;
the third not born alive,
somehow squeezed
between the other two,
could not survive.

It wasn’t until these
twins were twelve
that their mother
told them they
were triplets.

Now in the photo,
the two both smiling
under their sun bonnets,
wearing square patterned,
pink-and-blueplaid,
white gloves,
bobby socks,
one withblack patent leather,
the other, sturdy plain leather shoes,
still too young to know
of their lost sister.

Oh, but now they stand,
forever fixed in smiling bliss,
a time of joyful ignorance.

And I, as I look backwards,
with wonder at what they were
and what they have both become:
fine wives and mothers,
grandmothers, too,
both artists,
bothliving works of art,
thevery best that could be.

Only the shadow of the third
who might have also been
shadows my mind.