Split-Toned

God snaps your picture : don't look away --

this room right now, your face tilted

exactly as it is before you can think

or control it. Go ahead, let it betray

all the secret emergencies and still hold

that partial disguise you call your character.

Even your lip, they say, the way it curves

or doesn't, or can't decide, will deliver

bales of evidence. The camera, wide open,

stands ready; the exposure is thirty-five years

or so -- after that you have become

whatever the veneer is, all the way through.

Now you want to explain. Your mother

was a certain -- how to express it? -- influence.

Yes. And your father, whatever he was,

you couldn't change that. No. And your town

of course had its limits. Go on, keep talking :

Hold it. Don't move. That's you forever.

William Stafford An Archival Print