Between Painting and Photograph

El Prado’s great trees and faded colors

stare from this old post card,

its dusky colors between painting and photograph,

stamps and printed postmark

part of the ruse.

In another life I might look at this scene

and see a secret garden.

But this was where they grabbed him

January 3, 1974. He went out at 9

and never came home.

Margaret Randall is a poet, photographer and activist currently living in Albuquerque, N.M. This poem is from her collection, As If The Empty Chair: Poems for the Disappeared (Wings Press).