Daddy's Family Photo

A faded family picture always hung on daddy's wall

It's the only one that I know of ever taken of them all

Talmadge is holding Doris, Robert sits on Grace's knee

Dewitt and Leon are bookends holding together the other three

  No one recalls the occasion or who captured the moment in time

But in that faded photo was a life they soon would leave behind

  Grace would soon have Luther then shortly she was gone

Leaving Talmadge with eight small faces and for two years he carried on

  But one day something happened as many believed it would

That left six empty spaces in a picture where small bare feet had stood

  Scattered like by a driving wind, the six youngest went different ways

Five returned over the years, except Luther even 'til today

  If only one could turn back the clock and begin anew this day

Maybe they could change the forces that sent the six away

  So that next to daddy's photo which always hung upon on his wall

Could hang one taken later that still would show them all

  Poem by Frank Watson, Tallahassee, FL Submitted 08/20/06