If you look long enough...

This is a Photograph of Me

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

                            Margaret Atwood

What I love about this poem is that it is exactly that which the title says it is. Like many poems, it is a snapshot. It is a tiny fraction of a story about someone we have no knowledge of, in a place that is just as ambiguous. Every aspect of this poem makes it that. Atwood uses the image of the photograph to make the snapshot all the more vivid. It starts out as just a picture. The only thing in the readers mind is the thin piece of paper with a blurry scene, maybe someone's hand holding it up. Then gradually, methodically, she takes up deeper and deeper into the photograph, at first just pictorally, then emotionally. Not to mention the silencing effect the subject itself has on the reader. Simply a fantastic work of art.