THE PAINTING / ROBERT HALLECK
The town was small.
The museum was small,
free, and uncrowded.
He looked at the painting
with the artist’s name
faded to nothing.
It stayed with him
all that summer
and the years that followed.
A smiling girl with a sleeping dog.
Robert Halleck is a retired bank president who fills his days with hospice volunteering, greyhound rescue, and poetry. He has a weakness for open mic poetry readings and autocross racing. He underwrites a yearly poetry prize at Norwich University. In the last 50 years, three volumes of his poems have been published. His recent work has appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annuals, The Paterson Literary Review, The Galway Review, The Lake, and a number of other interesting places.
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