Portraits

by Rex Strother

Sliced and stored away from time’s cruel passage

Trapped there, in the latest silver image

They catalog the wind-burned boom-town visage

Filed away the rustics from time’s carnage

Frames of glances, stolen, flashed and frozen

Locked in crystal, simple chemistry

The light and metal wrestle history

Into fragments selectively chosen

And so, the sad, full eyes are shelved away

Bound up in leather worthy of the face

Of a loving, sand-whipped mother and wife

Until I look on them again today

A memory of those who ran the race

And laid theirs down that I might take up life.