This Lovely Girl

She appears as bright and

fresh as an early morning

dew-kissed blossom, walking

her dog in the neighbourhood

woodland.  And we, briefly

familiar with her father and

her mother years before her

birth, see her father's features

in the smiling 15-year-old's 

face.  There was, back then,

another dog, a volubly

emotional comic who brought

warmth and hilarity to chance

encounters.  She recalls him

fondly, this lovely girl whom

we've come across at two-year

intervals, witnessed emerging

into her current form and 

persona, as potent an emissary

of the continuity of wholesome

goodness in humanity's constant

process of renewal as any we

have ever encountered.