Words within a picture.

this is a photograph of me

Margaret Atwood

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

(basalm 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.)


Upon reading this poem and going over it in class I had awhile to think about it and figure out what I was going to say when I wrote about it in my blog.
Sometimes we have situations that arise that we seem to step outside of ourselves and can see the destruction we have cause for others, and mostly for ourselves. As the speaker is gazing into the picture and notices that she is "in" it, she could be speaking from a memory or again- she's stepping out of herself and noticing the death that she has brought upon herself.
"the effect if water on light is distortion..." This line made me think of at times the reflection that we may see in the mirror, or water, and how it seems to distort anything beautiful and turn it into a pure disgrace.
Through the fog the audience is able to understand that this is a picture worth "a million words..." but rather something that the speaker is highly regretting.
The authors purpose for placing the "deceased" in the middle of the lake also is for a purpose, because as normal human beings ( not superheros) we would be unable to see the body in the middle of the lake but as we persist to look we may be find exactly what we were trying to find- and that could be our own destruction. We have to look in the center in order to find the problem as to further bring the hope of fixing it at some point.

This is a reflective poem of the destruction that we may cause ourselves....