A Life of Celebration: Sidewalk Sam Memorial May 17th

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For Sidewalk Sam
So many brushstrokes
perhaps a purple flourish
across the stolid
unforgiving asphalt.
His paint dripping
from yogurt cups.
He brushed off
the gum,
the discarded cigarette,
the tumbleweed of newspapers,
for beneath
he saw a canvas.
He needed to feel his brush
where so many pounded
the pavement.
The poseur,
the pundit,
the plaudit,
the pol,
the stumblebums,
the flash-in-the- pan.
All those men
in gray flannel suits,
the women in
their Delman heels.
The dead drunk
perhaps falling
on his art
after a sucker punch
or a child staring
down in wonderment.
The mayoral smile of Kevin White
a reproduction of a European master,
perhaps someone will stop to look
as our world spins faster and faster.

----- Doug Holder (First appeared in Oddball Magazine)