Inside the picture it is 1903—late spring or early summer.
The three women sit on the front porch steps,
a potted fern to their right on the middle stair,

Like sandbox toys abandoned in mid-play
when mothers finally call the children home,
cars, trucks, and tanks lie strewn along the highway,

In old movies they searched the mummy’s tomb
with flashlights, on tiptoe—as if the dead
were listening, numbered the catacombs