Photo by Jack Palance

                                 Driving down Bay Street,
                                 I look up from my local road map,
                                 and there she is.  She stops me there,
                                 this little girl
                                 dancing in the street.

                                 Dancing, under an arc of rainbow
                                 the garden hose makes,
                                 dancing and skipping in a balancing act
                                 atop her invisible high wire,
                                 teetering, red umbrella turned inside out
                                 held high above her head,
                                 its dog-eared spokes dripping wildly with this,
                                 this of which she was born into, to be a child,
                                 all glee under an arch of water, ecstatic
                                 in the sheer abandon of what children must be doing
                                 all over the world at fire hydrants wrenched open
                                 or under downpours of rain, waterfalls upon them,
                                 eyes squinting and smiling, steps skittish
                                 and impish, faces tilted upward
                                 toward the sun.

                                 When I stop for her, she looks at me,
                                 then head bent, closes her eyes, backs away,
                                 and in a little curtsy motions me to pass by,
                                 to pass through, both of us now
                                 part of the same
                                 small moment of poetry.

                                 (C) Andrena Zawinski

                                 (Girl With Umbrella appeared in Runes, a Review of Poetry)