Long military coat, snapping blue eyes
a flower, pinned on her sleeve,
not over her breast where it should have been.
Grey hair stuck out from her head
where it had been cut in fistfuls.
With each passing car,
she picked up a large black plastic bag
of trash.  Hurled it onto the hood
of the car and laughed, uproariously,
her face a grimaced mockery
of the angry driver.
Her laugh was a full, all out bent double
belly laugh like the time we
smoked pot and laughed to the point of tears
when you pulled a low number
in the draft and knew
you were going to Viet Nam.
And the time, much later,
we smoked again and you
put your leg on backwards.
It was our right to laugh.
just as it was hers,
to laugh
with each
outrageous
black
bag.
