The Little Old Lady in the Woodstock T-Shirt
by Robert Cooperman
I spot her in the Safeway parking lot,
at least 80 and hanging onto her shopping cart
as if teetering with vertigo at a cliff’s edge,
her cane resting on the cart’s handle.
On her T-shirt, the Woodstock symbol:
birds trilling on a guitar’s frets,
Love and Peace in the grass-aromatic air,
while her cart totters with the blind
staggers to her Bug that she trembles open.
“Can I help you, Ma’am?” I ask,
as she struggles to lift her shopping bag
as if a barbell, and drops the dead weight
into the back seat.
She stares at me, as if afraid
I’ll hit her over the head for her purse
she grips like a lifeline, which maybe it is:
with all her money, I.D., and credit cards.
She looks at me again, notes my beard,
what’s left of my hair gathered in a ponytail,
sees my Jerry Garcia T-shirt, and demands,
Wanna score some righteous shit?
If not, get the fuck outta my face.
Share:
This might be my favorite published poem, partly because I manage to bring in one of my favorite obsessions, the Grateful Dead, but even more because of her unexpected and totally irreverent and defiant reply, breaking our assumptions about what a frail old lady should be and what she should say.
....................................................................................................................................................................................
ROBERT COOPERMAN "a Brooklyn boy, right down to a B.A. at Brooklyn College," moved to Denver in 1974 to study in the joint Literature-Creative Writing Program, and received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and 19th Century British Literature. He has taught English at the University of Georgia and Bowling Green State University, in Ohio. He lives in Denver with his wife Beth. His volume In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Pub. Co., 1999) won the Colorado Book Award in 2000.