She has seen me.
I stop his
arm from swinging
as he walks. The morning
summer on Cape Ann.
I push his hope of love
making−Oh, he feels good.
But she sees me stiffen
him and then
whatever saviors
she and he might have been
for each other, they are about to be
no longer.
He does not say aloud what I whisper
in his ear my name rather,
rotator cuff is bothering me.
My possession. I'll attempt to cause
their end. They cannot know
that when he inhaled the insect-i
-cide thirty years earlier, I’d now be
his. I am the best kept secret.
Until she sees me. No one
is crawling on their knees just yet.
It will be months before I bring them down.
*August 2009 At the neurologist’s office the diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease is made. The poem is from the manuscript-in-progress, The Mistress.