Bob Zaslow

The Photograph
A haiburn

My father is a young man again looking through his wire-rimmed glasses
at some driftwood near where we sit, his arms around my waist 
his face more serene than I remember.
He may have been telling me how cormorants will pose with
outstretched wings on a half-sunken tree stump for up to an hour.
Or how beech trees share rainwater with each other through their roots.
Or asking me what bird’s song I hear. His chin tilts slightly down
so perhaps he’s still. Not thinking. Rather, his mind is letting it be.
Trusting in the quiet joy of loving this spot and his son and his young wife,
who crouches five feet away. She smiles as she snaps the photograph.

the elm as it grows
must delight in its branches
each one like a poem

Bob Zaslow is a retired NYC teacher, advertising copywriter, and documentary filmmaker, one of which won a Bronze from the American Film Institute. He also has written a half-dozen one-act plays produced Off-Off-Broadway and a book to a full-length musical play produced Off-Broadway. 

Today, Bob lives in WA, where he has written and published a dozen children’s books, including the first-place award-winner, ‘The Mayfly and the Methuselah Tree.’ His poetry has been published in three local anthologies.