ARCHIVE ENTRIES:
Newsflash: 01-13-08
Newsflash: 11-28-2007
Proclamation/Preview
Newsflash: 10-04-2007
Making Wood
Postscript to Making Wood
Tom Russell/Cowboys & Indians
Western Horseman Review
Tom Russell review
Ray March review
Red Shuttleworth
Happy Birthday Paul!
(News?) Flash: 4-24-2007
08.19.06: News Flashes, part 2
08.16.06: News Flashes, part 1
07.01.06: poem Snapshot Gravity

© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.

Sacramento. Outer city. Mid-autumn
Saturday morning. Mid-sidewalk. Pushed
in a wheelchair, the gray-stubbled man,
dapper in his red plaid
tam-o-shanter and matching lap robe,
comes grizzled face to grizzled muzzle
with a swaybacked gimpy Saint
Bernard-Rottweiler-maybe Lab cross
pushed on a limp leash. Traffic jammed,
frantic, we—two anxious friends
lamenting with country-western threnody
the body’s plummeting descent—catch
between snatches of the oncoming
cars, the shutter-quick
glimpse of this soft
jowl-to-cheek encounter. The old
dog licks the elderly man’s sad face
into hysterics, into a laughter
out of his past. Hands
invisible, arthritic, anchored in his lap,
the man turns the other cheek
for more, their fun-loving nuzzle
facing the busy street
as if posing for the impossible shot. Why not
lift this picture from the fixer
solution in our darkrooms

shingled with 8-by-10 action
glossies of good karma? Why not
paste the captionless snap,
solo and centered, upon the black
last page of the hefty album
gravity will likely someday keep us all
from lifting off the bottom shelf? Time
decides who becomes this earth’s most
kindred—family, friends, acquaintances,
giving way to a blood-brotherhood
of strangers. Old man, old dog,
old portrait voyeurs—we all
take our over-exposed strolls
deeper into the residential flesh
where our hearts’ silent horns rejoice
after each close call, every chance
collision of reckless love.

                                    For Quinton Duval