Poppy
It’s hard to introduce her
without sounding racist or sexist or ethnicist
or something I’m not.
Well, anyway,
she was Chinese
and from South Africa
and she never developed
the art of driving automobiles
that all American males
(and females, and
all ethnicities)
develop.
She was late for a party
where thirty of us, faculty and students,
and her husband, waited.
Kent told us how
she side-swiped a car
at the mall a week before,
almost removed both its left doors,
but since this went unobserved
came home to innocently
say what she’d done:
“fortunately, just another
hit and run”.
Laughing over this
we heard a car crashing down the alley.
“Poppy!” he laughed, and it was.