Bonnie and Clyde in Fall River

I like Beethoven’s Third Symphony.

But the young twosome known as Bonnie & Clyde

were on the run,–– got lost heading north when they thought

they were heading south.

They were running from the cops after a petty shoplifting

episode, west of the bayou.

They drove night and day, and it grew colder, not so’s they’d notice.

But it grew colder than that.

Still, the twosome drove like a couple of bats from the belfry

of sweltering Louisiana.

Being a poet, Bonnie told Clyde she thought she could smell

"a different kind of salt".

Clyde stepped on the gas not realizing he was running

fast toward Bonnie's sense of smell, and the Ford V8,–– 85 horses,

and near 75 miles an hour barreled into salty southeastern

Massachusetts,–– the twosome finding their way to 1017 Bedford

across the street from Columbus Park, named for another

sacker of human dignity.

There, at the drainpipe, Bonnie snapped a Kodak Brownie

of the inhabitants thereof, liking the cut of their jib.

Wig and Annie didn’t rob nor were they killers.

But for one brief moment they simply appeared to be.

So the next time you listen to Beethoven’s Eroica, initially named for

yet another sacker of human dignity, remember my father and my mother,––

presumed innocent in the eyes of the law.