Theme and Message

The transience of human life. The poem's deepest theme is how brief and fragile human life is compared with the enduring natural world. The three girls' "terribly transient feet" and the mother's eventual death stand against the sea, which "appears to have changed less." A mere piece of cardboard outlasts the living people it pictures.

Memory, time and loss across generations. The poem lays three time-frames over one another — the mother's childhood, the mother's later laughter, and the poet's grieving present. It shows how the same photograph means different losses to different people, and how a loved one lives on only in memory once they are gone. …