This is a photograph of me by Magaret Atwood

Reading this poem a first and second time I thought that this is a poem that can put a bad day into the worst day. Just don't read the poem when you are in a good mood.

My first thought to the poem is that in the beginning she starts by creating  an image in your head about a possible tree branch, but she never describes herself in the picture about herself, which is interesting. It seems like she wants you to guess where she is in the picture and what this mean. I think the "drowned in a lake" has something to do with the photo also. My thoughts are that in the first 14 lines confused me in my first reading, but reading it a second time with emphasis on the parathesis part did I see the meaning of the photograph.

I think the picture described in the first 14 lines is just the result of the distortion.

I believe that there is no branch or the frame of a house halfway up the slope because of the lines:
'At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;' 

I believe that is not a branch because it says "a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree", which keeps you asking what is it? If it is not a branch then what is part of  the tree.

She tells you that she is in the lake in the centre of the picture just under the surface of the water. Then we are given the hint that it is the distorting effect of water that makes it difficult to discern what is there in the photograph. But if we looked long enough we'd see her eventually.