THE PRINCESS

 

She was a fixture,

one of those people you pass on the street

so often you stop noticing.

They called her The Princess,

rumored to be an Indian Princess or descended

from one, it was never quite clear.

She rode her bicycle around town

peddling a onepage paper, cheaply printed,

about twenty years old.

They called her Bicycle Annie too

but to me she was always The Princess.

Wizened, sundark, hostile,

she'd cuss you out at the drop of a hat.

She was something out of ancient mythology,

the crone, the hag; serenely vituperative,

she went her way from one end of town to the other

dealing out recriminations with an evenhanded malice.

I noticed her first in the 60s

but they say she'd been around much longer

and continued through the 70s, 80s, 90s.

Gradually, her mobility failed.

She pushed her bicycle instead of riding it,

then walked haltingly, feet bandaged.

Finally, she went to crutches but kept moving;

and, at the last she was relegated to a wheelchair,

rode cabs to the grocery, cussing the cabdrivers.

And then one day she was gone.

She'd been there so long I didn't notice

for a long time. There must have been a day

when she stopped, could go no longer

but I don't know when it was.

Now, today in a new century, I evoke her

as I walk on my cane to the grocery.

There's a kind of dark beauty in her memory.

And that's all I can say.

I wish I could say more.

She deserves more just for enduring,

for her constancy,

for the mark she left on us all

whether we know it or not.

 

 

Albert Huffstickler