******* Family Album *******
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By Elizabeth Santos

Photographs from decades past
Spark visions in the mind
Of days forgotten, friendships lost,
And places left behind
Each page that's turned recalls anew
All the Joys of childhood
That future eyes will gaze on
With the future misunderstood.

For no one truly knows the grief
Behind a smiling pose
And family secrets disappear
When album pages close
Pictures etch a heritage
In silence of a mime
Of one life to another
In a frozen face of time.

To know a life through photographs
Is Just to know a dream
For life displayed in images
May not be what it seems
From an album filled with faces,
The sentiments depart
And truth is carried only
In the mind and in the heart.

And so I think that pictures
Are a token of a soul
Exposing Just the outer shell
In what the eyes behold
The portrait of a father
Is a portrait of a son
But the truth behind the picture
Is a treasure fondly won.

Let the stories take you back
And be a vital part
So that the lives of those before
Can penetrate your heart
An old forgotten photograph
Is half a ballad sung
And so I tell the truth about
Each picture to my young.

The album then becomes alive
With Joy and pain and strife
And heritage more precious
In the meaning of a life.