They stood side-by-side
as if frozen, adjacent but
not touching, two dolls
whose hands were incapable of movement.
They are expressionless, neither
stoic nor smiling as though the photographer
wiped their faces free of expression.
Grant Wood might have painted them,
named his work Lithuanian Gothic.
I want so to see the people behind
these facades, but I know
that in 1934 a photograph was
a production, the flashbulb,
bloodletting faces, was seven years old
and I was eighteen years from my own
creation, so I cherish this look
at the grandparents I never knew.