My Landlady Brings Me an Easter Gift

She brought me a pot
of African violets
deepest purple

fleshiest blossoms
that ever grew
in Kmart's garden

and she laughed
with a bell in her voice

that rang all the way
to Tipton on the south

flung her hair about
in that sunlit shade
of a blonde woman
turned fifty
living like thirty
and getting away with it

having no doubt
she will retain that laugh
and shade of hair till ninety

Notes

McDaniel, Wilma. (2001) Borrowed Coats. Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York.
Courtesy University of California, Merced Library. Copyright owned by the Regents of the University of California.