The Second Wife

by Daniel Stokes

Late Spring that promised Summer
I hung out the washing as he cleared
a border for replanting.
A shirt half-pegged, I paused
and felt how lucky, our enclosed oasis,
this rectangle of nurtured green
breasted on three sides by shrubs
he soon would front with flowers.

   And as I chirped on, I saw
(I wasn't spying) him lift, examine
(as if he'd found a skull -
a buried pet whose site he had forgotten)
a glove, half-rotten, small,
too small for me, black satin,
with one pearl on its wrist
and without expression, drop
it in the weed-box.

              I stared at him,
behind a row of towels that hardly fluttered,
robust and beautiful, stretching, stripping
back whatever Winter wizened,
too absorbed to notice that I watched.