like a child's grown wide in twilight
gazing through a haze of fireflies and fog.
Maybe there was something to
the plain dark way of dressing then
and the hair slicked-down and drawn
tightly back.
And the quiet stance against the chair--
one hand folded across the other wrist,
one hand dangling a fan.
A woman who pauses to look,
who doesn't distract,
who though she can't see all
refuses to see what isn't there
and won't avert her gaze.
PROMPT: Photo postcards from a Library of Congress collection. Find various collections online at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/. Sometimes I have people choose 1, 3 or 5; sometimes I have them pass 1 or 2 to the left and 1 or 2 to the right so that they end up what something they didn't expect. They can then choose to write about just one or all.
