The shop didn't seem to be very big from the outside, with it's slightly shaved white paint crumpling on the surface, hanging on the St. Louis breeze. A lazy day, filled with open time and exploring to do. Stepping into the room brought an old smell...the smell of things that are aged and plesantly dusty. A muted light shone on the wall-to-wall beauty of art; paintings lining the wall. We were greeted with a thick, smooth accent; a blend of Spanish and what seemed to be British. His tall frame towered over me, and with his shoulders and back slightly hunched, he shook my hand...the sweet handshakes that only come from dearly wrinkled; fragile hands of the older and wiser that pause in midair refusing to release their sweet grasp. He began to tell us a story, followed by another, and another. Stories about being an old friend of Ernest Hemingway's....eating lunch with him and talking with him, of his own family's descent from Ecuador, coming to St. Louis to study art; how he had opened several galleries over the years. He shared his own self- portrait with us...as he held a worn copy of his likeness when he was perhaps 24. His eyes shone as he spoke. He held his life wide open to us. I felt like I was entering history through his life. He spoke with a frequent buyer and friend around a square table in back as he spoke to us as well. We admired the art, and spoke of what our lives were like. I told him that I wrote poems as well, and his eyes brightened, as he shuffled as fast as he could to his bag toward the back of the room, and pulled out a poem he had written; it had been recopied after apparently being published in a magazine of sorts. He handed it to me and asked me to read it aloud...as I read it, his eyes twinkled with pride. He offered the copy to me after I finished and had given my praise. We were about to leave, when his frequent buyer and friend insisted that we could pick out a picture in the bin we were looking through and he would buy it for us, explaining that he was so impressed that we were such a young couple with such a wonderful taste in art. Our dear elderly friend, Otto, had started this gallery, and passed it to his son to run....but with such a voracious appetite for life and art, he could not keep his arthritic bones away from his shop. He ran the gallery on Saturdays. What a blessing we strolled in on a Saturday. Walking out of the store, we left with more than just a sketching, a poem, and a friend-we left with the impression and story of a man we had met whom we would never forget.

Time Is Friendly...
Time Is Wise
By: Otto Tomsich

Time, like the wind, will lift the gloom and clear
Imagined guilt which feeds and sires our sorrows.
Time, like the rain, will also drown the fear
Of fate's capricious plans for our tomorrows.
Time, like the sun, will shine its proper light
On paths we blindly take, impelled by blunders;
And Time, like fire with its onrushing might,
Will turn to ashes what we thought were wonders.
Thus, when the passing hours intone their chime,
Think Time is friendly, know that Time is wise;
Give time to Time, then Time will give us time
To face the future and unmask its guise,
And journey timely-though the climb be steep-
To gain more fertile fields we still must reap.