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,
another pot of what looks like vinca higher up
on the porch itself. Delicate ivy vines fall
from the low railing; a profusion of blurred leaves
moves up the turned wooden column at the porch’s edge
and disappears at the top of the picture.
The woman in the middle, sitting highest,
holds a baby of three months or more,
who wears a bright white dress and smiles.
The baby is my father, and my young grandmother,
her hair piled high and caught with a ribbon,