GOOD NEIGHBOUR PAULINE - poem

A morning walk is an escape
from her Senior’s apt

saunters to her parked car
searching for birds
along the way, today a
Hairy Woodpecker, I see it too

wrinkles surround a sparking
smile, as December snow washes
her car in heaps of white.

“Need help brushing it off?” I ask.
She’s proud, a veteran of one-room
country classrooms, “Grades
one to nine, simpler then,” she said.

A chit-chat of memory continues as we
team-up scraping whiteness from her
car, “Students more polite too,”
remarked through puckered lips. “Some
wrote letters over the years, heard
my special one, Robert died last week.”

A sad lament and I’m lost for words.
“Imagine, only 71, his breath of
youth taken away, gone, just like that.”

Car now clean, Christmas wishes shared
she returns to the warmth
of her apartment
and I watch that lady shuffle
away, limbs unsteady

waving happily in the excitement
of 92 year old memories.