Morning Patrol
A gaggle of grandmas
gather to walk the same neighborhood loop
each morning going on
30 years now
Resilient, they are,
parka-ed and mittened in
frigid February
meeting pre-dawn to
outsmart August heat
Part exercise, part social club
part patrol squad
hawk-eyes seeing all
you can almost hear the clucks
as they pass a lawn gone wild
A few have grown daughters who have
moved back to the neighborhood
elevating them with valuable intel
into two generations of
happenings behind these front doors
I arise early one morning
to see three or four of them
stealing swift glances at our house
while the queen chatters away
what is it that they know?
and who told them?
Scott Westcott is a poet and ponderer living in Fairview, Pennsylvania within walking distance from the shores of Lake Erie. He finds inspiration by delving into past experience, trying to make sense of modern-day madness, and observing the seemingly mundane happenings of life in suburbia.
His published poems include These Things Happen in Hidden Peak Press, Twilight Remembered in Macrame Literary Journal, Chance Encounter in Neologism Poetry Journal Cabin Life in The Woodside Review and Wiccan Pledge in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Five of his poems will appear in the upcoming Earth Amulet Poetry Prize Anthology that will bring together diverse poetic voices engaging deeply with the natural world, environmental ethics, and humanity’s evolving relationship with the Earth.
