Sunday, April 30, 2006

Entropy


The picture was taken today, through my windshield. The poem was already on my laptop.


Entropy



Out for a drive,
for April's last flowers,
the neighborhood
drops petals
through my windshield.

The nameless Asian lady,
I've watched for years,
walking in rain and heat
and cold,
strides past
on spindly legs.

A white-haired man
stiffly pitches a ball
and as the throw ends,
I see a pain
and a question on his pale face.

Half a block farther,
a woman leads an old
white dog out into the street.
It lags behind on legs too small
where winter mats have been
cut away to let the spring air in.

4 comments:

Bonita said...

Oh, this is so lovely, the poem and the photo....the elderly couple are an inspiration. So beautiful.

Cathy said...

Thanks, Bonita. It was a lovely confluence as photo and poem came together.

Casey said...

Wow, weird! That's like a coincidence or... a miracle? Good poem.

Cathy said...

Oh, it gets better! Today on returning from birding at Magee Marsh I saw a young girl carrying a pet crate beside a busy intersection. It was cool and threatening rain showers. The mother hen in me started clucking and she accepted my offer to drive her home. I apologized as I pitched my birding gear into the back of my impossibly messy van. She smiled and easily recited the birds she's seen and admired in the woodlot behind her old apartment. There cannot be 3 people in all of Sylvania who could differentiate a myrtle warbler from a redstart and I'd just offered a ride to one of them. We chatted on the way to her apartment downtown and I asked about her schooling and learned she was home-schooled. Then I asked if she liked poetry and Robert Frost. ( OK - I'm only human.) Then I nearly fell out the car door when after establishing my poetry credentials and warning her that Frost's things are not always 'upbeat' - she recited "Desert Places" for me as one of her favorites. There aren't 'any' people in Sylvania who could do this. Then she straightened her hallo and disappeared though some door on Main Street.