Unknown, Circa 1910, by Elaine Wilburt

Antique photograph. Details not known.

Unknown, Circa 1910

In a photo from a salvaged dresser,
a teacher scarcely older than her pupils stands, rigid 
behind an empty chair, alongside older boys in jackets and ties by the back door 
of a one-room schoolhouse, small girls in pinafores and dresses, so few girls,
on the right by the main. All are white. Nearly all stare earnestly forward 
with somber faces, only one, head cocked, hand on a friend’s shoulder, invites
with a smile, only one gazes aside at the ground, white bow double the size of her head, 
in a pinafore as white and pristine as the years 
yet to come, 
    
                      so like her own oversized bow—a four-year-old 
on a settee. A serious face, the one I always knew. She never 
seemed a carefree soul. She lost so many children before 
my uncle was born, then my aunt, then my mother. 
(I learned early to be seen and not heard.) 

                                                                                 Almost 
at the top of the photo in the cropped window panes, 
the straight, slim bole of an elm unbroken by low branches 
canopies above these students who see past me, all but that girl, 
who see the camera, perhaps the schoolyard, the tree, which may live still 
beyond the frame, even then so much older than these children 
whose lives flamed and guttered long ago. Clear in the reflection. 
At once I hold hundreds of years of future and what is past in my hand. 

Elaine Wilburt

Elaine Wilburt’s fiction and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various online and print  journals including Puerto del Sol, Broad River Review, Uppagus and Heart of Flesh, among others. She lives in Maryland with her family, for whom she bakes 8-12 loaves of bread per week and countless other treats. 

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