Old ladies, dressed to kill! <br />Laughing, smiling, flashing gold crowned store bought teeth! <br />Greeting each other with cherry 'Good Mornings! ' <br />Brown and black and yellow and tan <br />Grandma's <br />Aunts and <br />Mothers-in-law <br />Sisters-in-law <br />Sisters <br />Friends <br />Neighbors <br />Gray-haired and bewigged. <br />Feeling happy, making chatter, <br />Eating fried chicken and homemade cake. <br />Dragging arthritic legs, forgetting the pain, <br />Feeling happy - out together! <br />Combined ages older than Methuselah, <br />Their wisdom insurmountable. <br />Eight a.m. and traveling North, going to Lancaster, Pa. <br />On a shopping spree, <br />Feeling happy! Feeling Free! <br />Hiding money in sagging bosoms - in little home-made pouches... <br />Feeling secure when wrinkled fingers tucked them in place - <br />Fingers, with rings sparkling, antiqued and diamond clad; <br />Nails aglow in reds and pinks! <br />Little Miss Johnson holding a cigarette in grand fashion, <br />Blowing half made smoke rings through red rouged lips - <br />She, the fine lady in charge. <br />Miss Eva Crowel called upon to offer prayer - calls <br />On the Angel of the Lord to take us all safely there <br />And to ride with us on our return - a prayer, deep, sincere, <br />Heart-felt! <br />Her Amen, echoed, rippling soft in solemn accompaniment! <br />I feel like a child, wrapped in the bosom of their warmth... <br />I smile to myself and tell Miss Maelissia, sitting next to <br />Me, just how glad I am to be there, and mean it!<br /><br />Dorothy (Alves) Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/going-on-a-shopping-spree/
