They've forced me to pose in the picture with them. I'm the unhappy one standing next to the man with sixty miles of summer in his smile. Like the others, I'm looking at the camera. Now I'm looking at the photograph to see if any of the fifteen of us has been, magically, moved out of place, shifted forward or to the side, changed in any way. Why are we posing? Because there is terrible faith in the ill-equipped future. We pose for the conquest of it, to keep the setting sun behind us, to assure the photographer that we believe in his belief in us. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PRAYER AT SUNRISE by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON A MENDOCINO MEMORY by EDWIN MARKHAM ALL GOATS by ELIZABETH JANE COATSWORTH THE POPLAR FIELD by WILLIAM COWPER BURIAL by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY SONNETS ON PICTURES: MARY MAGDALEN AT THE DOOR OF SIMON THE PHARISEE by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI |