Behold! Spoiled girls who moan from sunrise
to conniption in their daffodil socks and
pickled dresses, enjoying the heck out of
Mackintosh-flavored ice cream. In the tight
suburban creases, gray wolfen dogs with
sheepish grins dare you to inch closer. Out
on freshly painted bike lanes, svelte
lime-and-apricot bicyclists on Italian spokes
coast through the urban meltdown.

Gran, thoroughly enjoying her Sunday
afternoon constitutional with me, is a risible
character, if not an immutable gem. Nothing
escapes her color-enhanced vision, not even
tartan caterpillars munching on the nipplewort.

It’s a miracle Gran even ventures out,
believing everything in Darwin’s universe
conspires to dispense cerebrovascular accidents
her way. If a crow is continuously cawing
rhapsodies on a high wire, she’ll howl,
“Shut up! You’re singing me a stroke!” Once,
when an apprentice clerk from the local pet
shoppe accidentally fleeced her for a sack of
cat niblets, she lamented in manipulative
chantpleure, “You’re singing me a stroke.”

During our stretch, we soak in cherry
blossoms amidst stalwart ficus whispering
to pines on church-lined promenades.
We also cherish a weeping willow
ensconced on the nearby golf course,
its iridescent boughs reaching low as if
to greet us with a grandma-forgotten hug.

Lawmen in a lustrous Rover wave hello
as they cruise by. I assure Gran they
aren’t looking for me, at least not today.
Later, we spot plough boys on leopard skin
scooters whizzing through the sunset as if
announcing the old rules don’t apply.

Outside a comely Victorian, we inhale Scotch
brooms like salted yolk flourishing amongst
chest-high, and taller, ragweed. Below a
latticed casement, a family of imperial deer
snack silently on Kentucky bluegrass. Just
then, a melee of bearded motorcyclists astride
gargling behemoths rumble past the grazing
fawn, scaring them into the thicket, abruptly
bridging harmony with the torrential.

I know if Gran was around, she’d raise her fist
and screech, “Turn off that racket! You’re
singing me a stroke!” Sigh, I miss Gran.