In pursuit of knowledge

I drove past a retarded girl
skip-shuffling 
over sidewalk cracks.
Gait, tilted and gimpy.
She staggered
loop-armed in the grasp of
an elder.
Her coat, 
hanging from out-poked shoulders,
cannot fit over 
twig-like, bent, misshapen,
arms and fingers
and threatens, at next jostle, to throw
itself prone at her feet like a dark
rip suddenly created in her wake.

As I pass, I catch her face 
and jerken motion in my mirror.
She is smiling 
(no, not the smile of jester or fool). 
Full-faced and sun-basked, ignorance is.

John Wesley Lampe
Copyright (C) 2004