Grace Unbidden

She couldn't have been more than three--
skinny arms and legs sticking out from under
a loose pink pinafore that had seen better days
her ponytails done up in too-tight rubber bands,
she beamed a brown smile in my direction.
"Helloooo" she crowed and stretched out her arms
as if I warranted trust and affection
and unaccustomed to geniality from one so young
I halted mid-plod to repay her attention.
At the edge of the vacant lot
the child's domestic-mother
paused from picking the cabbages
in her employer's unauthorized plot 
long enough to check out this neighbor,
and with an indulgent smile and a shrug
that said,"That's just the way she is,"
called herself back to the tedious job
before her, redoubling her labor.
As should I, said I to myself,
wary of wasting a minute
of the prescribed hour on the exercise bike
back home, though my heart wasn't in it.
But the angel, insistent, hailed me again
now stomping an imperious foot,
"Hellooooo, hellooo . . ." she bellowed out loud
making clear her refusal to brook
from this new devotee any inattention,
unwilling to let me off the hook.
And so I stopped and I turned and I smiled
(perhaps I'd been frowning till then?)
when all at once the surge of a vagrant breeze
brought home a joy unbidden.
"What's your name?"
I ventured in my best baby-speak
as I bent to match her height,
"Grace," she giggled as off she spun
now twirling with delight.

 I can't say it actually happened this way, but the poem is based on an actual experience.

Art by Milt Kobayashi.