Stanza-wise Explanation

The poem moves through three stanzas, each capturing a different phase of time.

Stanza 1 — The photograph (the mother's childhood)

"The cardboard shows me how it was / When the two girl cousins went paddling..."

The poet looks at an old photograph mounted on cardboard. It captures a moment from her mother's own childhood: two younger girl cousins paddling at the sea, each holding one of the poet's mother's hands, for the mother was then "the big girl — some twelve years or so." All three stood still to "smile through their hair" at an uncle holding the camera. The poet calls her mother's face "a sweet face", and gently notes that this was "before I was born." She observes that the sea "appears to have changed less" than the people, as it "washed their terribly transient feet" — a reminder that the girls, unlike the sea, were short-lived and mortal.

Stanza 2 — The mother remembering (years later)

"Some twenty — thirty — years later / She'd laugh at the snapshot..."

Many years on, when the poet herself was a child or young woman, the mother would laugh at this same snapshot, pointing out "Betty / And Dolly" and joking about how they were "dressed... for the beach." For the mother, that seaside holiday was her own vanished childhood — "her past"; for the poet, her mother's affectionate laughter is now "her laughter", the poet's own treasured past. Both, the poet says, are "wry / With the laboured ease of loss": each memory is bitter-sweet, and each person made light of loss only with painful effort.

Stanza 3 — The present (the mother's death)

"Now she's been dead nearly as many years / As that girl lived..." …