Premonition

The exceptional bonnet of Miss Ethyl Louise
was pale pastel blue with a giant white and gold Aster
and navy ribbon whipped around in perfect order

I thought she might have been partially lost
making her way to an important horse race
but the look in her eye told me otherwise

I smiled at her with spring-cooled love and the
sweet buzzed pollen covered hello of a honey bee
and offered her my calloused hand.

"It's ok dear, I don't need your help," she chirped
at me so merrily it almost seemed like an embrace.

But her eyes, they told me the story of a bear
woken early from winter slumber -- and hungry.

It was right then that the wind blew in from Denmark,
cold and cruel, to steal her hat away, I think.
She watched it dance

Along the edge of the grass, first bounding
over a tiny patch of snow in a deep shadow
then soaring up the branches of a white fir

"I shall miss that hat, I think," she muttered
not to me. "I shall miss that hat, Indeed.
What a loverly blue, what a loverly flower"

She turned back towards the somewhere else
and I don't think she shed a tear

She took seven steps, maybe eight
then, on the coldest Easter I remember... dropped dead.